MSL Video Options

[Jim from NSF.com]

Saw the MSL video, which was similar to the MER video. It was awesome. Will try to get a copy

[PhilHorzempa]

For those interested in MSL's RTG system, here is the link
to a great paper summarizing the design. It looks like
they have it figured it out, at least in the engineering world.
Perhaps, it is the world of politics, or the availability
of Plutonium, or both, that is holding back
a definite decision.

http://marstech.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/...-2005-01-28.pdf



Another Phil

[angel1801]

Russia has said to the US that the US can buy Plutonium-238 for $2000 per gram from Russia if and only if it is NOT used for any military purpose. Russia has lots of Plutonium-238 to give the US!

The US has said it will resume domestic production of Plutonium-238 as soon as possible.

It is most likely that there is a lot of political sensitivity to anything nuclear. Just look at the fuss over the Galileo, Cassini and New Horizons missions!

If we told the people that RTG's were used in the Viking landers, then I'm sure most of the fuss will go away.

Protestors are strange people. No one protested against the launch of the Voyager 1 & 2 probes. Why? Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977, just 4 days after Elvis Presley died! And Voyager 1 launch date (on September 5, 1977) was during the immense grieving over his death!

[ljk4-1]

Protestors are strange people. No one protested against the launch of the Voyager 1 & 2 probes. Why? Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977, just 4 days after Elvis Presley died! And Voyager 1 launch date (on September 5, 1977) was during the immense grieving over his death!

I recall one quite vocal anti-nuke protestor who was not only deeply
concerned that Cassini would somehow fly back to Earth and crash
on it after exploring Saturn but that during the probe's 1999 flyby of
Venus that NASA should have let the craft smash into the second
world from Sol because the planet had no atmosphere!

I was also told by a friend who attended an anti-Cassini (read anti-nuke)
group meeting in Cambridge, MA in 1997 (home to Harvard) that when
he tried to explain how safe Cassini's RTGs were even from an explosion
of the rocket, he was told they didn't want the facts because they had
already made up their minds that Cassini was dangerous and had to
be stopped.

After all that, any amount of sympathy I had with the anti-nuke groups
went right out the window.

BTW, Groucho Marx died around the same time as the Voyagers left
Earth and Elvis went into hiding, but sadly people didn't seem as upset
about his passing.