Reliable. That's what NASA claimed last year about the Titan 4 rocket used to loft the Cassini space probe loaded with 72.3 pounds of plutonium dioxide, the most deadly plutonium ever put on a space device. The fiery explosion on launch this summer of an identical Titan 4 rocket, following the 1993 explosion in California of yet another Titan 4, gives lie to the NASA claim.
There have now been two catastrophic accidents in the 25 Titan 4 launches. That's a one-in-12 severe accident rate. Reliable? If you knew your Chevy or Honda had a one-in-12 likelihood of blowing up upon starting, you would not take that ride.
But here is the US government insisting that a volatile rocket be shot up over Florida carrying chemical and/or nuclear poisons. It remains unclear what poisons were dispersed in the August 12, 1998 Titan 4 explosion, but there have been uncorroborated reports that nuclear materials might have been involved. Government authorities have issued unusual orders demanding people stay away from the debris.
This summer's Titan 4 explosion demonstrated that opponents of the Cassini mission were absolutely right: There was a high probability of the Titan 4 that lofted Cassini blowing up on launch and showering Florida with plutonium. Although NASA managed to launch the Cassini space probe successfully last October 15, the probe and its 72.3 pounds of plutonium are coming back, with even greater potential for disaster. On August 18, 1999, NASA intends to have Cassini conduct an extremely dangerous flyby of Earth. Unless NASA can be stoppedïand there is a major move underway to try to do soïit plans to have the probe and its plutonium fuel do a slingshot maneuver of Earth, using the planet's gravity to increase the velocity of Cassini so it can reach its final destination of Saturn.
Cassini is supposed to come flying in at 42,300 miles per hour just 496 miles overhead. If there is a rocket misfire or other malfunction and the probe makes what NASA terms an inadvertent reentry into the Earth's 75-mile-high atmosphere, it would break up and plutonium would rain down, which NASA admits in its Final Environmental Impact Statement on the Cassini mission. If that happens, five billion of the estimated seven to eight billion world population at the time, says the statement, could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure. A safety evaluation report done for the White House by the Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Panel (which included NASA) says such a Cassini flyby accident could cause several tens of thousands of latent cancer fatalities worldwide.
Independent scientists say casualties could be much higherïhundreds of thousands or millions dying. The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space is seeking to get NASA to redirect the Cassini probe to the sun to be consumed, rather than risk such a loss of life on Earth in a flyby accident. Certainly, Cassini's widely reported but unexplained engineering problem in January, which caused the spacecraft's operations to revert to "safe-mode," is worrisome.
But even if NASA can't be stopped and the Cassini flyby works, there is still much more nuclear danger ahead. The General Accounting Office said in a May 1998 report that NASA is currently studying eight future space missions between 2000 and 2015 that will likely use nuclear-fueled electric generators. These nuclear shots would be launched from Florida with the Titan 4 as a principle delivery vehicle. NASA began a shift to using the Titan 4 for its nuclear missions in the wake of the 1986 Challenger accidentïthe next mission of the ill-fated Challenger was to loft a plutonium-fueled space probe.
Pressure from Lockheed Martin (which manufactures the plutonium systems for space devices as well as the Titan 4), the nuclear-boosting US Department of Energy and the national nuclear labs has much to do with NASA's instance on the life-threatening use of nuclear power on space devices. Then there is the military connection. The US military is seeking to deploy spaceborne weaponry, especially lasers. As a 1996 Air Force report states: In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of space-based weapons of devastating effectiveness.
What can you do? Immediately get in touch with Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, POB 90083, Gainesville, Florida 32607; (352) 337-9274; globenet@afn.org. Join the challenge to the madness of nuclearizing and weaponizing space.
Get a copy of the just-released videotape "Nukes In Space 2: Unacceptable Risks," which is about the planned Cassini Earth flyby, NASA's other planned nuclear shots and the US military's desire to deploy space-based nuclear-powered weapons. "Nukes In Space 2: Unacceptable Risks" is available for $21.95 from EnviroVideo, Box 311, Ft. Tilden, NY 11695; 1-800-ECO-TV46. Log on to the Stop Cassini Earth Flyby web site at http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby.
Karl Grossman is professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury where he teaches environmental journalism and investigative reporting. He is the author of The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat To Our Planet (Common Courage Press, 1 Red Barn Road, Monroe, Maine 04951; 1-800-497-3207).