Folks discuss unlikeliness of Cassini space mission disaster.

On October 6, 1997, NASA is planning to launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida the Cassini space probe with 72.3 pounds of deadly plutonium on-board.  The probe will use the plutonium to power electrical instruments during its voyage to the planet Saturn.   As Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, states - plutonium "is so toxic that less than one-millionth of a gram, an invisable particle, is a carcinogenic dose.  One pound, if uniformly distributed, could hypothetically induce lung cancer in every person on Earth." 

Yet NASA would load 72.3 pounds of plutonium -- the most that has ever been used on a space device -- on the Cassini mission. 

How could the plutonium be released and kill people?
There are two key periods of extreme danger:
 
 

1. The Cassini probe will be taken into space on a Titan IV rocket.  If this rocket explodes on the launch pad or in the atmosphere -- as the space shuttle Challenger did in 1986 -- then it is possible that the lethal plutonium could spread across wide areas of Florida. 

2. If there is no mishap during the launch, the Cassini probe will be sent into space once the Titan IV achieves orbit.  Because Cassini's propulsion source doesn't have the power to send it straight to Saturn, NASA plans to send it to Venus first, and then, after two swings around Venus, have Cassini and its plutonium hurtle right back toward Earth.  The idea is to use the Earth's gravity to increase Cassini's velocity so that it can pass by Jupiter and then go to Saturn.  Cassini is to pass just 312 miles above Earth in what NASA calls a "slingshot maneuver" or "flyby".  But too deep a descent could cause Cassini to disintegrate in the Earth's 75-mile-high atmosphere.  Then, according to City University of New York nuclear physics professor Dr. Michio Kaku, the plutonium -- "the most toxic chemical known to science" -- would "shower down with a tremendous tragedy for the people of the Earth."

NASA's Record of Failure
NASA claims that the plutonium on board the Cassini probe has almost no chance of contaminating the Earth. They say that the Titan IV rocket won't crash during the lift-off. 

However, the Titan IV rocket is the same kind of rocket that on August 2, 1993 exploded over the Pacific Ocean, destroying its payload containing a $1 billion U.S. spy satellite system. Indeed, three of the 24 known U.S. space missions involving nuclear power have met with accidents, as well as six out of the 39 Russian missions. Space missions are clearly not as safe as NASA would like the public to believe. John Pike, head of space policy at the Federation of American Scientists, estimates the odds for failure of a Titan IV rocket are "between one in ten and one in twenty."
 
 

... the odds for failure of a Titan IV rocket are between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20

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The above information was excerpted from one of many pages concerning the Cassini launch that can be found on the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice website at  http://www.afn.org/~fcpj/space/cassini/index.htm
It is the position of many experts that there are far less dangerous methods that could be used for this mission.  Check out the FCPJ site for additional information.

The official NASA Cassini site at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/ tries hard to convince us nervous nellies that everything is A-OK , thank you.  Be sure to check out their Nuclear Safety section if you have a fondness for the word "unlikely."  There I ran into the old "extremely unlikely sequence of events" which, to my knowledge, first came into popular usage during the Three Mile Island funfest.  Some things never go out of fashion.

The STOP CASSINI WEB SITE at http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/cassini.htm is thorough and has links to many articles on the subject of nukes in space.  Check out the link to Professor Karl Grossman's new book, The Wrong Stuff, and the one to "FALSE, TRUE... and TRUER," which is a rebuttal to the NASA "False, True" page, which is a rebuttal to the folks who think Saturn isn't going anywhere and maybe we should slow down a think this thing over a bit.

EnviroVideo at http://home.earthlink.net/~envirovideo/ produces environmental videos on nukes in space (including Cassini), Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, nuclear waste, renewable energy (solar, wind, hydrogen), food irradiation, cancer, pollution, environmental racism and more.

You can also visit another Stop Cassini Web Site at http://www.lovearth.org
The site looks like it was designed by some folks who should trim their coffee intake, but it offers many suggestions on possible actions and links to related sites.  Some of the reccomendations: 
 

1. Call/Fax President Clinton at the White House:  (Phone) 202 - 456 - 1414, (Fax) 202 - 456 - 2461.  He has the authority to cancel or postpone the mission.  These numbers are available 24 hours a day,  7 days a week. 

2. Call the Senate and Congress for free at  888 - 723 - 5246.  (Representatives Lynn Woolsey, Ron Dellums, Bernie Sanders and Pete Stark are now against the Cassini Mission.) 

3. Send 3 Western Union letters for only $9.95.   Call  1 888  NO CASSINI.

You are encouraged to Save and display this page on your website, if you have one.  The cartoon above is 30KB.  There is a larger version (44KB) with slighty different caption also available.
 

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And 50 years into the future, the Spacebusters are still looking longingly at Saturn, which is rumored to be out there somewhere (probably).

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