CNN Coverage of Cassini Issues

[Bob Hearn <rah@america.net>]

How do we counter this intentional promotion of the obscure and
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Anti-nuclear groups urge delay for NASA's Cassini

                     September 8, 1997
                     Web posted at: 9:29 p.m. EDT (0129 GMT)

                     WASHINGTON (Reuter) --
                     Scientists, engineers, public
                     health officials and
                     anti-nuclear activists called
                     on President Clinton on
                     Monday to delay the launch
                     of NASA's plutonium-powered Cassini probe to Saturn. 

                     Opponents of the $3.4 billion mission contend that the 72
                     pounds (33 kilograms) of plutonium Cassini is to carry
will
                     pose a potentially lethal risk to humans if the
spacecraft
                     blows up or re-enters Earth's atmosphere after launch. 

                     "I find that the NASA bureaucrats are living in fantasy
                     land," physicist Michio Kaku of the City University of
New
                     York said at a news conference with other Cassini
                     opponents. 

                     Referring to NASA's worst-case estimate of the potential
                     for damage from any mission mishap, Kaku said, "Many of
                     these numbers are simply made up." 

                                          Kaku disputed what he said was
                                          an overly optimistic assessment
                                          of damage by the National
                                          Aeronautics and Space
                                          Administration, saying NASA's
                                          estimates of a possible 2,300
                                          cancers attributable to a Cassini
                                          plutonium leak did not take into
                                          account winds that could blow
                     radioactive plutonium over a wide area, increasing the
                     cancer risk for a much larger group of people. 

                     Cassini is scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral
                     October 6 but is likely to be delayed by a launch-pad
                     slip-up that damaged part of the spacecraft in August.
                     NASA officials said last week that insulating foam inside
                     the craft's European-built Huygens capsule was torn by
                     "inappropriate" air conditioning at the launch pad. 

                     The craft will be taken aloft by a Titan IV rocket, which
                     NASA acknowledged has a historical failure rate of one in
                     20. However, NASA said the chances of a Titan IV launch
                     accident releasing plutonium were about one in 1,400. 

                     The mission calls for Cassini to fly by Venus twice,
then fly
                     by Earth and Jupiter before arriving at Saturn in July
2004
                     for a four-year study of the ringed planet. 

                     Kaku and other opponents of the current mission urged
                     Clinton to postpone Cassini and to authorize a new design
                     for the mission so that it could use a new solar power
                     source developed by the European Space Agency. 

                     Alan Kohn, a retired NASA
                     official who handled
                     emergency preparedness for
                     staff at Kennedy Space
                     Center for two previous
                     space missions carrying
                     plutonium power packs -- the
                     Ulysses and Galileo probes
                     -- joined Cassini opponents. 

                     "Please help us to stop this criminal insanity, or
else figure
                     out how we can provide permanent fallout shelters for all
                     living beings on the planet," Kohn said in a statement at
                     the new conference. 

                     Neither NASA nor White House Science Adviser Jack
                     Gibbons, who could make a recommendation to Clinton to
                     delay the mission, had any immediate comment on the
                     opposition to Cassini. 

                     However, NASA said in a statement on the Cassini
                     mission that the plutonium used to power the craft is a
                     heat-resistant ceramic form of plutonium dioxide, which
                     reduces the chance of it vaporizing either in a fire
or in the
                     event it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. 

                     NASA also said that even the latest solar power cells
                     would not work on Cassini. 

                     The Planetary Society, a non-governmental group
                     boosting space exploration and study, said failure to
                     launch Cassini would be "an enormous financial,
                     intellectual and exploratory loss." 

                     While acknowledging that "the launch of spacecraft cannot
                     be made completely risk-free," the society said, "the
                     public can take satisfaction in knowing we are being
                     careful, prudent and smart as we move forward and
                     outward beyond Earth." 

                     Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.