When 60 minutes of hysteria nearly shot down a NASA mission to Saturn

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute via Getty

Few barriers could have been worse. For a spacecraft to reach the Jovian system with enough speed to eventually reach orbit around Europe, it had to either launch from a powerful rocket (which NASA didn’t have, limiting the spacecraft to a space shuttle) or be absurdly light (which made the required radiation armor impossible). JPL engineers hastily made equations written in chalk before banging fists against blackboards in desperation.

Was nothing for NASA ever free … except for gravity assistants. Normally, the service could compensate for the lean speeds of heavy spacecraft by taking indirect flight paths and using planets encountered along the way to push the robotic pilgrim out, in, or forward. Since the laws of physics are immutable, and the most striking numbers known, NASA’s orbital dynamics could do this all day long, hurling the numbers right at spacecraft, one planet to another: Isaac’s free propulsion. Newton. It was incomparably the best bargain in space exploration.

But then the gossip journalism on television got involved and everything got complicated.

In 1997, while awaiting launch at Cape Canaveral, the Cassini mission was suddenly ravaged by political protest. Cassini carried three radioisotope thermoelectric generators powered by the decay of plutonium 238. The plutonium was not of the Back to the future variety – a disturbing drop of Scary Substance indeed in a homemade flux capacitor – but rather stored in a ceramic form, wrapped in iridium and caked in graphite. It could not corrode, or be wiped out by heat, or evaporate, or disintegrate as an aerosol, or dissolve in water. It was created to withstand not only the explosion of the rocket it is carrying, but even a catastrophic reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Since it couldn’t vaporize, no one would accidentally inhale it in a disaster situation and develop super powers or additional appendages. In fact, it was designed so that you could even eat the stuff. The human body could not absorb it.

NASA’s Mars 2020 mission could rock our world

But 10 days before three and a half million pounds of rocket thrust dropped inches between Cassini and Earth, a much smaller number – 60, as in 60 minutes– almost nailed to NASA. The CBS TV news magazine aired an article about the upcoming Saturn spacecraft, Steve Kroft, starring in the segment. The correspondent’s opening line: “On October 13, a Titan IV missile will take off from Cape Canaveral with seventy-two pounds of deadly plutonium; enough plutonium, at least in theory, to deliver a fatal dose to every man, woman, and child on Earth multiple times. “

And it only got worse from then on. Cassini was an afterthought in the story, and expert interviews were interspersed with comments from … non-experts, to be kind, but very well-spoken non-experts, whose contributions – the generous ones! – included rules such as: “What entitles anyone, including the federal government, to risk the death or – or injury of the population just for space exploration?”

The segment featured a Department of Energy plutonium expert who bluntly stated that even if the rocket, spacecraft, and graphite-sealed iridium-wrapped ceramic plutonium on the launch pad would blow up, it was literally impossible for the debris to do what protesters said it would. But to balance out, Kroft’s menagerie of ominers described in lurid detail some plutonium – not in the form used by NASA that you could safely sprinkle on your breakfast cereal because, again, you could eat it– could put on the human body. One of the highlights: “it can cause lung cancer” and “you could have numbers like 100,000 or more people getting lung cancer” and “if there’s such an explosion, you can kiss Florida goodbye.”

Kroft even found a former NASA employee (“He’s neither a scientist nor an engineer,” Kroft admitted, “but …”) to publicly mourn his role in endangering lives because of frivolities like space exploration . “I honestly feel guilty,” wailed the remorseful insider.

To seal the deal, Kroft cut the story with excerpts from an interview with Wes Huntress, NASA’s head of the planetary program, who had chaired the successful Mars Pathfinder landing just months earlier.

“This comes from your own environmental impact statement,” Kroft said to Huntress – the host’s tone solid yet affable, his face harsh but eyes somehow benevolent. “I want to read you a few things from it.”

Huntress was a pioneer in the study of interstellar clouds and one of the world’s foremost experts in planetary exploration, but he was not exactly tabloid TV material, and after the deluge of activists arguing forcibly and without interruption , he seemed less than confident in his responses.

Quoted Kroft, “When there is an accident, it talks about, quote,” the removal and removal of all vegetation in contaminated areas, the demolition of some or all of the structures and the permanent relocation of the affected population. ” ”

“Should such an accident happen,” Huntress said accurately but unhelpful.

Kroft replied, “I mean, that sounds pretty drastic …” and Kroft waited patiently for Huntress, in possession of the rope needed to hang himself, to fill the silence that 60 minutes interview subjects always did, and he did and did it.

Well, the – what they probably talk about most of the time – is the damage on the spot, near the – near – to the launch pad, because obviously, when one of these things goes, there’s a lot of damage near the launch pad. “

And after Huntress tap-danced and staggered –this man didn’t even know what his own official Armageddon report said!– and finally she gracefully swung from the gallows, followed well-crafted doomsday thinkers, explaining exactly how life as we know it ended, and kiss your babies tonight because our reckless quest to conquer the cosmos – Saturn! This pointless mission to a gas giant, whatever that means, will leave mutant survivors fighting for the last of canned goods on ransacked store shelves.

Worse, Cassini would strike a second blow at the peaceful people of planet Earth! If it didn’t detonate at launch, it was set to take a VVEJGA trajectory to accelerate its way to Saturn: that is, two sweeps through Venus (V, V), and then it would play chicken with the earth, and if something went wrong … (but if all went well, from Earth [E] to Jupiter [J] for a gravity assistant [GA]

The United States Air Force Security Police form a line to thwart protesters demonstrating against the planned launch of Cassini nuclear-powered spacecraft in front of the security fence on Oct. 4, 1997, at the Cape Canaveral Air Force station in Florida. Cassini is a scientific spacecraft that will travel to Saturn for a five-year journey to orbit the planet and place a probe to the surface.

Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty

The Clinton administration really didn’t have time for this, but dutifully took in the panicked letters and optics of protesters grabbing harmonica-covered chain links on the edge of Cape Canaveral, while inside the police in flak jackets and riot shields in silence. stared, just waiting for – what? Open fire? Swinging bats?

Nonetheless, NASA went ahead with its reckless rocket launch, which would probably only allow cockroaches to crawl across Earth (or whatever a future species might call this planet), and all went well, as they had been dozens of times in previous launches. But HQ’s message to those submitting future space missions: if you need to launch radioactive material, Do not plan trajectories to return the spacecraft to Earth for gravity assist. Nobody needs a headache.

For Karla and the company, that meant years of discussions about possible trade-offs for the Europa Orbiter mission, as it was later called. They analyzed other trajectories, different launchers – everything to gain more mass for an appropriate scientific return. What hardware do you make ‘radhard’ – radiation insensitive (but expensive) – and just wrap in ‘dumb mass’, ie big blocks of cheap protective shielding? What was the absolute minimum scientific load? In the end, they found a relatively happy medium: a spacecraft that could launch instantly and achieve the minimal science needed to make a Europe expedition worthwhile, and NASA loved it, and then the cost doubled, and in 1999 Ed Weiler shot it. Just like that.

From THE MISSION, or: How a disciple of Carl Sagan, an ex-motocross rider, a Texas Tea Party congressman, the world’s worst typewriter saleswoman, California Mountain People, and an anonymous NASA official went to war with Mars, survived an uprising at Saturn, Traded blows with Washington and stole a ride on an Alabama Moon Rocket to send a space robot to Jupiter in search of the second garden of Eden at the bottom of an alien ocean Inside an ice world called Europa (a true story ) by David W. Brown. Copyright © 2021 by David W. Brown. From Custom House, a series of books by William Morrow / HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted with permission.

Share this:

Related