1 in 200 chance Florida will be nuked Tuesday.

[ElGuapo]

Read this article, down a bit, and then look up likely scenarios on your own.

New Horizons nuclear powered Pluto probe launch (http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av010/060116rollout.html)

Would you want to be living in mid-Florida right now? Scenarios include plutonium, the most deadly poison ever know to man, getting into the water table and/or atmosphere or water cycle if the rocket explodes. If you doubt the "unlikely" statistics being quoted, you have something in agreement with Richard Feynman (http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/SocialConstruction/FeynmanChallengerRpt.html)

I hate it when the government puts our lives at risk unnecessarily. I hope to god this thing doesn't explode. Keep yer heads down.

[Lunch of Kong]

It's a brand new Atlas V booster. They've had 50 years to correct the defects in the design. Don't worry, be happy.

[XPav]

Dude, even with the worst case, there wouldn't be a mushroom cloud. Stop with the overheated rhetoric, and perhaps then you can have the sane discussion.

Nuclear Energy isn't a big scary monster. Reactors don't go up unless people are really, really, really stupid.

It's the same thing with guns. Remember Elian Gonzales? People ask "what if that gun had gone off" when the SWAT guy was in the general area of the anointed kid.

Guns don't "go off".

People in Florida need to get a grip.

But you're in DC. Does anything actually get done in DC?

[jeffd]

PANIC

[Lloyd Heilbrunn]

Wasn't that how the Swamp Thing was born???

I'll keep my eyes west on the Glades for all youse guys......

[Linoleum]

Let me put this very very very simply.

If you take this seriously you have two choices:

A) retake nuclear physics 101
B) embrace intelligent design

The only way a RTG is going to kill you from a launch failure is if it lands on your head. That deadly deadly plutonium? Here's a pop quiz, how much plutonium do you think has dusted us from 1945-199x from weapons testing and fission pile experiments:

A) ~.03+ grams
B) ~140+ grams
C) ~5+ kg
D) ~3+ metric tons

[ElGuapo]

[Strike that, it's an Atlas V]

The point is, do we need to get to Pluto in 10 years? Why is it so important, that we are willing to take these rather sizeable chances? Even if we deem it important, what about another power source or propulsion system? I have no huge problem with nuclear energy. I do have a problem with sending up a payload including plutonium on a highly explosive rocket into the atmosphere. It's highly irresponsible.

(By the way, yes, the headline of this discussion was rhetoric ... it was used as a device to get people to think about and react to this issue, which I think is fairly important).

[XPav]

Think and react?

You realize that the immediate reaction is "ElGuapo is a luddite who see 'nuclear' and his brain shuts down". Not saying that's the case, but that's the reaction. Physics!

As for highly irresponsible, how about we argue about the fact that a few luddites who are scared shitless and stupid about the word "nuclear" seem to want to keep everyone burning fucking coal and continue the raping of the earth and spewing of plutonium. That's fucking irresponsible.

Launching radioactive materials into space isn't new, anyway. It's not even a reactor. RTGs have been launched into space... oh... 23 times over the last 3 decades, reliabily and safely.

[Bren]

The subject line is really overstating the danger. It should read "1 in 200 chance Florida will be radioactive Tuesday." Relax, guy!

Is there any point in worrying about this? If there were a catastrophic failure, and plutonium dust was scattered all over the east coast (again), do you really think the public would even be told? C'mon, that's the kinda shit that causes panic, and anger, and accountability, and other bad stuff like that. Chances are, they'd just let it all slide under the rug. The only real "evidence" -- purely circumstantial -- would be a gradual but steady increase in worldwide cancer rates over several decades...

Heyyyyyy....

I'm just flabbergasted the dumbasses are still relying on vertical launches, and haven't yet developed a deep space probe that can run on solar power. I mean, c'mon, this is the twenty-first fucking century! Pfft! Rocket scientists my ass!

[Gordon Cameron]

retake nuclear physics 101

Retake?

Damn, I guess the liberal arts curriculum at USC was sorely lacking.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Dude, even with the worst case, there wouldn't be a mushroom cloud.

What about a smoking gun? And if there is a smoking gun, what form will it come in? The form of a smoking gun? The form of a mushroom cloud (but it's not actually a mushroom cloud, of course, it's really just a smoking gun, but in the form of a mushroom cloud)? The form of something the Wonder Twins turned into one time? The form of your mom?

WE NEED DEBATE!

[quatoria]

1 in 1 chance that ElGuapo will post weepy hysterical bullshit to Everything Else.

-quatoria,
from Florida

[Midnight Son]

Fear everything! Don't leave the house!

[Mike Hussey]

Dude, even with the worst case, there wouldn't be a mushroom cloud.


This is where I miss that little blue disappointed face smiley .

[jpinard]

As for highly irresponsible, how about we argue about the fact that a few luddites who are scared shitless and stupid about the word "nuclear" seem to want to keep everyone burning fucking coal and continue the raping of the earth and spewing of plutonium. That's fucking irresponsible.

Could not agree more. The anti-nuclear energy faction is retarded beyond measure. Thanks to them we have these fucking insane electric bills - plus pouring huge amounts of CO2 into the atmoshpere. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

[noun]

You guys missed the obvious impending FOX column:

"Terrorists taking control of rocket launches and using them as weapons - how soon will it happen?"

[andtron]

Reporting from Florida, situation normal. Though my teeth do tingle a little.




//gotta love the strontium 90 from turkey point. \oo/ (double headed cheer)

[Flowers]

200:1? What's the line from Vegas?

[ElGuapo]

I would not say I'm in any way an alarmist. I think this issue needs debate by the publuc at large, to see if we really need to be launching nuclear material into the atmosphere. This is in no way related to nuclear energy or nuclear power plants, it's a totally different kind fo technology (RTGs). Both, launched into space on explosive rockets, are dangerous to the public, and in my mind an unneeded risk.

I love it how someone says "We should be concerned they are launching nuclear material into space!" and there are those that come out and say "you're a luddite". I didn't call for a protest or armed resistance, I had an (admittedly) catchy headline with links to a reasonable article (from Space.com) and argument about the reliability of NASA's PR department and reliability of rocket launches in general.

Those who aren't worried in the slightest and see no cause for alarm at all suprise me. Yes, it's a ceramic plutonium-238 fuel. But would you want your kids to (or would you) drink the local water supply if the thing blows up in it's first stage?

Weepy my ass. These things need to be discussed by the public, not dismissed outright.

[Linoleum]

Those who aren't worried in the slightest and see no cause for alarm at all suprise me. Yes, it's a ceramic plutonium-238 fuel. But would you want your kids to (or would you) drink the local water supply if the thing blows up in it's first stage?

Why yes, yes I would.

[dannimal]

Every summer for the past few years, they've closed beaches on Michigan's SE shores because the water isn't SAFE TO SWIM IN!

And we're supposed to put discussion of this at the top of the list?

There's only about a billion more important things to worry about.

[Alan Dunkin]

[Strike that, it's an Atlas V]

The point is, do we need to get to Pluto in 10 years? Why is it so important, that we are willing to take these rather sizeable chances? Even if we deem it important, what about another power source or propulsion system? I have no huge problem with nuclear energy. I do have a problem with sending up a payload including plutonium on a highly explosive rocket into the atmosphere. It's highly irresponsible.

(By the way, yes, the headline of this discussion was rhetoric ... it was used as a device to get people to think about and react to this issue, which I think is fairly important).

Actually yes we do need to launch now - the planets will not be in a proper alignment for any kind of useful gravity assist for many, many years. On top of everything else, scientists believe that Pluto's atmosphere freezes when it gets to a certain point in its orbit away from the sun, which is due to happen in 15 years or so (they figure). They'd rather a study a gaseous atmosphere, such as it is, rather than a frozen one on the ground. Basically this is the last chance to get to Pluto in any kind of meaningful timeframe for some time to come.

As for nuclear power, the problem is that it will be impossible for a spacecraft to be powered by solar panels alone beyond Jupiter orbit to any extent. Radioactive sources are the only reliable form of energy available. There was a lot of talk when Cassini went up about the dangers (when it launched and then at its flybys), but the plutonium is stored in a reinforced container that is supposed to withstand explosions and other crap (there was debate over this as well).

Frankly I think its about as responsible as it can get.

--- Alan

[Jason Levine]

There have been many plutonium-powered space probes haven't there? What's all the fuss about this one?

The really remarkable thing about this probe isn't the electrical power source or the booster stage. It's that the probe's final stage will accelerate it to 46,000 mph after it leaves earth orbit, passing the moon's orbit in only 9 hours. Apollo missions took 3 days to reach the moon from earth orbit.

[Alan Dunkin]

It's only going to take something like 12-13 months to reach Jupiter. That's pretty fast.

--- Alan

[Robert Sharp]

It's only going to take something like 12-13 months to reach Jupiter. That's pretty fast.

--- Alan

*skips key points of divergence in the thread* They're going to nuke Jupiter?! What the hell?!

[Alan Dunkin]

Haven't you seen 2010? :)

In any event you can all watch Florida get nuked here:

http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx

--- Alan

[Talisker]

In any event you can all watch Florida get nuked here:

http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx

--- Alan
Awesome -- thanks!

Sounds like they've pushed back launch to 1:45pm due to wind.

[Duality]

CNN.com's alert is also saying because of a sticky valve.

Clearly, Florida is in great peril.

[Linoleum]

Also see:

http://spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av010/status.html

For running countdown/flight status updates.

[Jason McCullough]

The only way a RTG is going to kill you from a launch failure is if it lands on your head.

So if the rocket blows up and spreads plutonium all over the place it won't change the cancer rate at all?

[Linoleum]

So if the rocket blows up and spreads plutonium all over the place it won't change the cancer rate at all?

In short: no, it will not.

For one thing, you seem to be under the impression that a catastrophic vehicle failure will in and of itself result in complete compromise of the RTG. That is not a major concern, nor even a minor concern.

The major threat is a launch mishap in the first 40 seconds of flight when debris from a damaged RTG could fall back to the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station where impact on concrete or exposure to burning solid rocket propellant could cause a radiological release.

That worst case is an extremely localized hazmat cleanup headache and negligable exposure for area personnel which they are prepared for and monitoring closely. There won't be any meaningful areawide contamination.

Now, to use an analogy, New Horizons is a thimbleful of gas. Chernobyl is a tanker truck. When the tanker truck blew up, it did some damage, but far far less than people had originally thought or estimated (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/cancer/dn7951). If you're in Florida outside the Cape at the moment, you should be worried about whether or not you put on sunblock rather than if the Atlas blows up in flight.

[Qmanol]

In addition, the article quotes the concern in the majority of the cases to be heavy metals poisoning from the plutonium, which is quite chemically toxic when inhaled. Radiological effects are minimal here. If plutonium was that nasty, every nuke reactor ever would be in a deadly wasteland by now.

Also, most deadly poison ever known to man my ass. I'll take aflatoxins and dioxin over this.

The "I'm so scared of plutonium" brigade is even stupider than the people in the early part of the century who drank and ingested radioactive material for its magical powers. At least they have the excuse of ignorance. What's yours?

[Alan Dunkin]

Launch is scrubbed and Florida survives for another day. Alas, Babylon.

--- Alan

[Talisker]

Launch is scrubbed and Florida survives for another day. Alas, Babylon.
Stupid wind.

[andtron]

Stupid wind.
I know I'm new here but, damn! You fuckers are cold. I'm going to go cry myself to sleep under my desk now. :(

[Jason McCullough]

Lino, "Chernobyl will probably only end up killing 4,000 people" is less of an encouraging tale about overblown worries than you think.

My point with asking is that if the accident rate is not zero, and the expected death rate from an accident is also not zero, they aren't being hyperventilating luddites, they have a valid concern to their wellbeing that you're ignoring. Nowhere have numbers been presented about the likely effects of an accident that would put their concerns at rest. For all they and we know, a plutonium chunk landing in a watershed will statistically kill off a bunch of people.

They shouldn't trust the authorities who have fucked up in the area of public health impacts from radiation, repeatedly, unless they're completely transparent about the process. Blathering on about "stop being excitable and just trust us experts with a history of fucking up" doesn't cut it.

Edit: What's up with the "how much plutonium was put in the air from experiments and testing" pop quiz? What relevance does adding atomized plutonium to the planet over a 50 year period have to "big chunk falls out of rocket failure?" You're just browbeating with random facts.

[Midnight Son]

First dibs on three-breasted mutie babes!

[Graeme Dice]

Lino, "Chernobyl will probably only end up killing 4,000 people" is less of an encouraging tale about overblown worries than you think.

Coal power plants kill tens of thousands int the U.S. every single year.

My point with asking is that if the accident rate is not zero, and the expected death rate from an accident is also not zero, they aren't being hyperventilating luddites, they have a valid concern to their wellbeing that you're ignoring.

The expected death rate from me quantum tunneling into the middle of the sun is not zero. Should I consider that a valid concern to my wellbeing?

Edit: What's up with the "how much plutonium was put in the air from experiments and testing" pop quiz? What relevance does adding atomized plutonium to the planet over a 50 year period have to "big chunk falls out of rocket failure?" You're just browbeating with random facts.

A big chunk is far safer than dust, since most people don't inhale large chunks of material, and you can collect it rather safely.

[Bren]

So if the rocket blows up and spreads plutonium all over the place it won't change the cancer rate at all?

C'mon Jason, that's obviously caused by the evils of second-hand smoke!

[Ben Sones]

Let's cut to the chase here--I think that we can all agree that a 1 in 200 chance of nuking Florida is a pretty bad thing. So is there any way we can improve the odds? Maybe get it up to 1 in 20?

[Bren]

Put it on a Space Shuttle?

[Ben Sones]

Ouch.

[rimshot]

[Linoleum]

My point with asking is that if the accident rate is not zero, and the expected death rate from an accident is also not zero, they aren't being hyperventilating luddites, they have a valid concern to their wellbeing that you're ignoring.

I'm not sure failing to make a distinction between 'nonzero' and 'statisticially insignificant' is an improvement over being a luddite.

Nowhere have numbers been presented about the likely effects of an accident that would put their concerns at rest.

For people in the category defined above, their concerns will bever be put to rest. Maybe if we had some omnipotent deity to underwrite the endeavor, but there you go. Of course, it's not interesting or sexy to go digging through the years of paperwork, studies and reports between NASA, the DOE and EPA about such things.

They shouldn't trust the authorities who have fucked up in the area of public health impacts from radiation, repeatedly, unless they're completely transparent about the process. Blathering on about "stop being excitable and just trust us experts with a history of fucking up" doesn't cut it.

So all of a sudden it's 1952 again? The pendulum has swung very very far the other way. The price of our ignorant innocence has been condemnation to live in fear and ignorance out of proportion to the risks and dangers involved.

Edit: What's up with the "how much plutonium was put in the air from experiments and testing" pop quiz? What relevance does adding atomized plutonium to the planet over a 50 year period have to "big chunk falls out of rocket failure?" You're just browbeating with random facts.

Because people read the 'omg is the most toxic substance evar!' and have no context. 10-30kg of Pu-238 dispersed in high atmosphere is irrelevant and wouldn't happen anyway. I don't think you have an appreciation of how small a chunk of metal it is when you have that kind of density.

I swear, this is like watching people get up in arms/take seriously if say the Catholic Church issued a pronouncement against stem cell research because there might be some random mutation that would cause some kind of supervirus of god's wrath to wreak havoc on the population. It's about the same level of scientific or statistical 'rigor' wrapped in the cloak of concern.

[Miramon]

Guns don't "go off".

Actually, they do just go off in the sense they are frequently discharged accidentally.... the #1 police disability cause was once (and probably still is) foot injury from shooting themselves. And of course these are (supposedly) well-trained officers we're talking about who carry a gun every day, not idiots cleaning loaded guns or looking down the barrel to clear jams.

I imagine the numbers have gone down since the police have mostly switched away from revolvers (naturally they all carried bullets under the hammer despite it being against regulations) but I'm sure self-injury with a gun is still a very high ranked police disability claim.

Anyhow, returning to topic, I believe the odds of anyone in particular actually being poisoned by a space probe reactor's plutonium are so low as to be negligible compared to many other routine hazards, and don't bear comparison with commonplace risks of death and disability like being hit by a drunken driver.

The problem is it would be a weird and exciting way to die, so it naturally receives a lot of press. Remember when Brookhaven was going to destroy the world with a strange matter catalytic reaction? Yeah, right....

[MatthewF]

What would we really be losing if Florida blew up besides Jeb Bush, lots of old people, and Disney World anyway? Nuke it, I say.

[Marcus]

Whats really funny is that we have 19 year old kids running nuclear reactors after only a little more then a year and a half of training.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[JMR]

Waaaaaaah! Didn't we see the same hysteria years ago with the launch of Galileo in '89 or '90? I remember celebs jumping on the bandwagon and I remember Ted Danson and John Cougar Melloncamp crying their bleeding liberal hearts out "if that thing launches then it's the end of the world!".

[quatoria]

My point with asking is that if the accident rate is not zero, and the expected death rate from an accident is also not zero, they aren't being hyperventilating luddites, they have a valid concern to their wellbeing that you're ignoring. Nowhere have numbers been presented about the likely effects of an accident that would put their concerns at rest. For all they and we know, a plutonium chunk landing in a watershed will statistically kill off a bunch of people.

Uh, maybe you haven't been paying close enough atttention, but aside from you, the only person weepily hyperventilating about the NUKLEAR PERIL is El Guapo. Do either of you live in Florida? No? I didn't think so. As far as I can see, none of my fellow Floridians in this thread are particularly concerned.

[Jason McCullough]

So the responses are 1) it's really unlikely, 2) not that dangerious, 3) less dangerous than other things that really suck but no one notices (coal pollution), 4) and if you're still worried about it even though we haven't given you an estimate of how bad it'd be other than "trust us" you're a smelly hippie.

What's the expected body count if it fails? Can anyone tell me? If not, why are you so confident it's absurd to worry about?

Quat, I'm not "hyperventilating" about the risk, I'm asking what the risk is. Which no one really knows, apparently.

[Graeme Dice]

What's the expected body count if it fails? Can anyone tell me? If not, why are you so confident it's absurd to worry about?

Probably because there's little reason to suspect that the body count would be larger than the number of people hit by the debris.

[MikeSofaer]

Jason, the toxicity and radioactivity levels of plutonium are known. You could compare them to an expected dose should the plutonium be completely atomized and spread throughout, say, 10 cubic miles of air. A lot of people seem to think NASA has probably done this and decided there's no significant threat. If you're interested in whether they are correct, why not look at the numbers yourself?

[shift6]

4) and if you're still worried about it even though we haven't given you an estimate of how bad it'd be other than "trust us" you're a smelly hippie.
Some of the people questioning your conclusions here are smelly hippies, but you aren't. So WTF are you talking about, Donnie?

[Jason McCullough]

Graeme, can you elaborate on why there's little reason to expect the plutonium death rate to exceed that of impact debris?

Jason, the toxicity and radioactivity levels of plutonium are known. You could compare them to an expected dose should the plutonium be completely atomized and spread throughout, say, 10 cubic miles of air. A lot of people seem to think NASA has probably done this and decided there's no significant threat. If you're interested in whether they are correct, why not look at the numbers yourself?

I can't find them in the article, can't find them online, and the article makes them sound pretty ho-hum about the whole thing, not confident it's safe, so that's why I'm asking.

I'm more amazed now that everyone here seems awfully convinced it's not dangerous based on nothing more than NASA's history-of-incompetence word on the subject.

[Jack Black]

Not on topic, because Jason is lazy as hell.

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/atmosphr/

[MikeSofaer]

The Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium) on Plutonium indicates that its chemical toxicity is on the level of caffiene, and that the primary danger is lung cancer due to inhalation of volumes on the order of 1 ug.

Assuming an even distribution of the plutonium mass over 10 cubic kilometers (10^10 meters^3) and a plutonium mass of 1 kg, that gives 1ug Pu / 10^4 m^3.

Estimating a person's lung capacity as 0.1m^3 we have a 1 in 100,000 chance that a given breath in our 10 sq km area will contain enough Pu to (concievably) kill you.

OK, that's on the edge of worrisome. But the assumptions are quite strong:

1) We are talking about complete particulization of a 1kg mass. Very unlikely.
2) 10 sq km is not a large area to evacuate. There might not even be any such area with dwellings within the 1km rocket height that is necassary for the assumptions. (1km x 10 km^2)

So in the absolute worst case, it would be advisable to drive away from watching the launch and get a car wash very quickly. Have I missed a threat mode here?

[Graeme Dice]

Graeme, can you elaborate on why there's little reason to expect the plutonium death rate to exceed that of impact debris?

Well, the original article itself points out that the exposure to radiation would be about a third of what you'd normally receive in a year. The isotope they are using is an alpha particle emitter, so you'd have to actually breathe the stuff into your lungs for it to cause radiation damage. There's only 24 pounds on board the craft, and since we've already had plutonium powered satellittes burn up in the atmosphere, I'd not be too worried about one more. Really, what evidence do you have that there is any real danger involved here?

[Alan Dunkin]

Alpha radiation won't even penetrate clothing (or was it paper) if I recall correctly.

--- Alan

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Alpha radiation won't even penetrate clothing (or was it paper) if I recall correctly.

I only wear paper clothing, so it sounds like I'm all set.

[Jason Levine]

Launch is scrubbed and Florida survives for another day. Alas, Babylon.

--- Alan

Another plutonium-free day for Florida, as severe storms in Baltimore knock out primary power at mission control. Forecast is 80 percent chance of acceptable weather at the Cape tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon.

[Alan Dunkin]

Coincidentally, as for the history of using active isotopes, etc. space probes and landers since Viking have used nuclear power sources. Maybe before, but the two Vikings are the first I know of.

--- Alan

[Jason McCullough]

The Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium) on Plutonium indicates that its chemical toxicity is on the level of caffiene, and that the primary danger is lung cancer due to inhalation of volumes on the order of 1 ug.

Assuming an even distribution of the plutonium mass over 10 cubic kilometers (10^10 meters^3) and a plutonium mass of 1 kg, that gives 1ug Pu / 10^4 m^3.

Estimating a person's lung capacity as 0.1m^3 we have a 1 in 100,000 chance that a given breath in our 10 sq km area will contain enough Pu to (concievably) kill you.

OK, that's on the edge of worrisome. But the assumptions are quite strong:

1) We are talking about complete particulization of a 1kg mass. Very unlikely.
2) 10 sq km is not a large area to evacuate. There might not even be any such area with dwellings within the 1km rocket height that is necassary for the assumptions. (1km x 10 km^2)

So in the absolute worst case, it would be advisable to drive away from watching the launch and get a car wash very quickly. Have I missed a threat mode here?

I don't know (groundwater effects?), but at least you're trying to answer the question. You'd really assume NASA would file a "likelihood of disaster" impact statement with scenarios somewhere.

Really, what evidence do you have that there is any real danger involved here?

What evidence do you have that there's not? And "x pounds" and "you have to breathe it" are the start of estimating the impact, not the end.

[Nick Walter]

What evidence do you have that there's not?

So you go through life assuming EVERYTHING is a grave danger until someone can present solid and thorough proofs otherwise? How do you sleep?

Basically this entire conversation is only happening because some people see "nuclear" or "plutonium" and automatically assume we are dealing with armageddon scenarios. Since I'm not aware of any rational basis for such knee jerk reactions, I tend to dismiss them out of hand.

[Jason Levine]

I'm having trouble visualizing a scenario where the plutonium could possibly be spread over a wide area of Florida. As a kid, I had the considerable thrill of witnessing one of the early Saturn rocket launches live. The Kennedy Space Center is located on Cape Canaveral for a reason. The Cape is this little isthmus thingy sticking out into the ocean. The rockets are launched on a tragectory that pretty much immediately takes them out over the ocean. (Not that I'm saying it's good to dump plutonium in the ocean, but that's not the point here). If a rocket starts to veer off course when it's launched, it's immediately blown up. That would put the plutonium down on the Space Center, but not over some highly populated area. If something goes wrong later in the launch sequence, the stuff comes down in the ocean, as in the Challenger disaster. So how does this "wide area of Florida" scenario come about?

[Jason McCullough]

So you go through life assuming EVERYTHING is a grave danger until someone can present solid and thorough proofs otherwise? How do you sleep?

Basically this entire conversation is only happening because some people see "nuclear" or "plutonium" and automatically assume we are dealing with armageddon scenarios. Since I'm not aware of any rational basis for such knee jerk reactions, I tend to dismiss them out of hand.

The "rational reaction" to finding out plutonium, the chief ingredient of nuclear weapons, which everyone has heard toxicity anecdotes about, could be exposed as part of a launch accident from the proven-clusterfucks at NASA is "dismiss out of hand?"

[Alan Dunkin]

You do realize do you not that not everyone at NASA is a proven clusterfuck?

--- Alan

[Nick Walter]

The "rational reaction" to finding out plutonium, the chief ingredient of nuclear weapons, which everyone has heard toxicity anecdotes about, could be exposed as part of a launch accident from the proven-clusterfucks at NASA is "dismiss out of hand?"

So you admit your basis for worry is "everyone has heard?" Go check out snopes.com sometime for an insight into how readily people will believe complete horseshit because they've heard it multiple times and everyone knows it must be true.

[MikeSofaer]

Jason, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation for you, so it's true that that's where estimating danger starts, not ends, but it was enough to convince me that the risk is minimal. I don't consider that a dismissal out of hand, and I think that my intuitive estimation that there was likely no danger before I did the numerical estimate also does not qualify as dismissal out of hand.

Plutonium is not some homeopathic toxin where 10s of atoms will kill a person. Its biological toxicity is high but not as high as things like botulin toxin. It's an alpha emitter, so its radiological danger exists only if it is ingested or inhaled.

The estimate I used (1 ug) is an incredibly small amount of mass. It is the weight of a nanoliter of water, which is a drop too small to see, about 1/10,000th the size of a normal drop of water. This is the range estimated for risk of lung cancer from inhalation. It's way smaller than any reasonable risk of chemical toxicity. In other words, lung cancer from breathing Plutonium dust is the highest risk, and it makes sense to focus on that.

I suspect NASA written a lot of pages on the topic of Plutonium safety. Because of the way NASA is structured, you can very likely get the reports from them. If you are interested in knowing the answer to how NASA estimates the danger why not contact NASA public relations and request copies of the relevant documents?

Have you seen any numbers indicating there's a credible public health issue here? Not qualitative "it makes sense" stuff, but actual calculations indicating this is dangerous?

[Jason McCullough]

So you admit your basis for worry is "everyone has heard?" Go check out snopes.com sometime for an insight into how readily people will believe complete horseshit because they've heard it multiple times and everyone knows it must be true.

What's your basis for determining it's a-ok? Your degree in nuclear physics?

Really, for the layman hear it comes down to:

1) You can normally trust the experts to figure this out. However:
2) History of the government lying and screwing up things like this.
3) NASA has serious and long-running institutional troubles with risk assessment and safety as evidenced by multiple space shuttle explosions due to awful management.
4) Plutonium is not good for you.
5) The NASA opinion presented in the article is not written in a definitive "here's the risk and impact" style - it's basically "uh we guess it's unlikely and here's some unrelated analogies about danger," so it's not exactly encouraging.

Have you seen any numbers indicating there's a credible public health issue here? Not qualitative "it makes sense" stuff, but actual calculations indicating this is dangerous?

No. I also haven't seen any saying it's safe either, other than the PR claptrap in the original linked article.

I am throughly amazed how much everyone will trust NASA's not-transparent process and badly explained opinion on this.

[Nick Walter]

What's your basis for determining it's a-ok? Your degree in nuclear physics?


Did you miss my last post? I have no basis for saying it's a-ok. I don't need one. That's like asking if I have a scientific basis for proving waffles don't cause massive explosions. It's a nonsense statement. I don't think we need to start disproving that NASA is about to turn central FL into a post apocalyptic wasteland until someone without a tinfoil hat points out anything resembling a legitimate concern.


I am throughly amazed how much everyone will trust NASA's not-transparent process and badly explained opinion on this.

I am thoroughly amazed at how much you've bought into the tinfoil-hat perspective on this one. You are usually a little more astute than this Jason.

[mouselock]

What would we really be losing if Florida blew up besides Jeb Bush, lots of old people, and Disney World anyway? Nuke it, I say.

But I really enjoy Disney World! :(

[Jason McCullough]

Did you miss my last post? I have no basis for saying it's a-ok. I don't need one. That's like asking if I have a scientific basis for proving waffles don't cause massive explosions. It's a nonsense statement. I don't think we need to start disproving that NASA is about to turn central FL into a post apocalyptic wasteland until someone without a tinfoil hat points out anything resembling a legitimate concern.

I am thoroughly amazed at how much you've bought into the tinfoil-hat perspective on this one. You are usually a little more astute than this Jason.

Nick, I actually don't think anything bad will happen and NASA probably is ok on this one You seem to be confusing my arguments about how logically there's no way the average citizen would know the actual safety here for predictions of doom.

What's with the ridiculous hyperbole about exploding waffles having the same risk factor as plutonium on top of rockets that fail all the time?

[Jason Levine]

Answering my own question here, the article linked in the initial post in the thread states that from launch to the 23rd second of flight a catastrophic failure of the Atlas V booster would bring the RTG back down on the Cape. From T plus 23 seconds to T plus 40 seconds, the rocket is in a position where, if it blew up, upper level winds could theoretically take the radiation plume over populated areas. After T plus 40, the only place it's going is into the Atlantic. How likely is a booster failure during those 17 seconds that would cause the RTG to fail structurally? I'd be more concerned about lying in the Cocoa Beach sun without my SPF 15.

[Jason Levine]

What's with the ridiculous hyperbole about exploding waffles having the same risk factor as plutonium on top of rockets that fail all the time?

I'd say that "fail all the time" is pretty damned hyperbolic. When's the last time an Atlas failed on launch? (For the record, I know the Atlas V is fairly new, but I believe they've launched 5 or 6 of them now without incident.)

[Jason McCullough]

I'd say that "fail all the time" is pretty damned hyperbolic. When's the last time an Atlas failed on launch? (For the record, I know the Atlas V is fairly new, but I believe they've launched 5 or 6 of them now without incident.)

Depends what you mean by "all the time". The failure rate on the shuttles doesn't look that high per launch (1% per Feynman I think?) but when you do it multiple times a year for years you end up with two of them gone.

[Jason Levine]

I don't see the relevance of Shuttle failures to Atlas series boosters. You only have to look at the Shuttle launch system to see it's inherently a more dangerous design. You might as well throw in V-2 failures if you're going to make that argument.

[Jason McCullough]

Ok (http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2001/03.html).

According to the blue chart at the bottom, the Atlas launch failure rate has gotten better, but it's still around 5%.

[Union Carbide]

Ok (http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2001/03.html).
According to the blue chart at the bottom, the Atlas launch failure rate has gotten better, but it's still around 5%.

Maybe I missed it somewhere, but what is considered a failure for that graph? Only catastrophic failures? Or do aborts based on weather or system failures that are caught before launch count as failures?

Edit: just looked again. Considering the STS curve on that graph, I have to conclude that it is useless for your argument, as the STS has only one catastrophic launch failure, and all the rest are weather/technical aborts.

Edit 2: That graph ends at 2000, and Atlas V did not have its first launch until Aug 21, 2002.

[Jason Levine]

FWIW, the Atlas V series shares little or no technology with the Atlas ICBM of the 50s and 60s and the Mercury-Atlas rocket that was derived from it. In fact, the Atlas V, although it carries the name of an American Cold War missle, uses Russian-designed engines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V_rocket).

[Alan Dunkin]

The nuking to begin in less than a minute..

--- Alan

[Marcus]

All I have to say is fuck florida anyways. I think really 3 people would care if that place was wiped off the map and one of them would be the president.

[Jason Levine]

Looks like a flawless launch. Florida is spared.

[TriggerHappy]

All I have to say is fuck florida anyways. I think really 3 people would care if that place was wiped off the map and one of them would be the president.

I care, damnit!

Only until my family gets out, then fuck it. Lived in that hellhole for 20 years.

[Malderi]

I am throughly amazed how much everyone will trust NASA's not-transparent process and badly explained opinion on this.

I am thoroughly amazed at how shiny the tinfoil hat is on your head. Not *everyone* in the government is a bumbling idiot, and I'd be willing to bet that most of NASA is far smarter than you or I. Personally, I live in Orlando, watched some of the launch from my laboratory parking lot, and saw it go up successfully, like so many others before it. Nobody even pays attention to non-manned launches around here anymore - there's a couple a month, occasionally you look up and see one, "look, ya'll, thar goes another one o dem rocket thangs".

[Jason McCullough]

NASA's blown up two shuttles and they still haven't fixed the problems that caused them. Forgive me for not trusting that they're good at risk assessment anymore.

[Alan Dunkin]

Oh please, your wild broadstroking generalizations are really getting tiresome.

--- Alan

[XPav]

A-fucking men.

Lets make some broad statements about Microsoft. How about this: "Microsoft must not have any testers, I mean, their applications are so damn buggy..."

[Jason McCullough]

Have Microsoft bugs killed people and destroyed billions of dollars in hardware? No.

[Squirrel Killer]

It's a good thing Jason posts like this, occasionally I forget to stop taking him seriously.

[XPav]

Have Microsoft bugs killed people and destroyed billions of dollars in hardware? No.
Billions of dollars in lost productivity! Yup!

[antlers]

While NASA may not be good at figuring out if a rocket will blow up, they've been pretty good about figuring out what will maintain structural integrity even in a worst-case launch disaster. The RTG would. It's as simple as that.

Much bigger nuclear reactors have had uncontrolled re-entries before and the effects have been minimal.

I've heard from a NASA scientist that Idiot fear-mongering about RTG's is a primary reason why the Mars rovers only have enough power to go a few hundred meters a day. If they had been equipped with RTGs (like the Viking landers) they would have a more robust science package and a much greater exploring range.

[mouselock]

NASA's blown up two shuttles and they still haven't fixed the problems that caused them. Forgive me for not trusting that they're good at risk assessment anymore.

When was the last shuttle explosion due to o-ring failure brought about by low temperatures? And after, what was it, 82?

Really, you seem to have an enormous grudge going on here for no discernible reason. The only thing I can think of that's as hard to try to attempt as building a single vehicle and taking it in and out of earth's atmosphere multiple times would be building a single vehicle and taking it between the top of the sea and a couple miles down. There's a history full of horrible mishaps for you!

Really, we have planes go down killing more people more often than all the space agency disasters combined. Am I to assume that you believe we ought not to send people across country on planes because of the horrible, awful, tragic waste of human lives the inevitable failure causes?

[ElGuapo]

Clearly I don't understand the "stick-your-head-in-the-sand" advice given here. There is a large difference between being a tinfoil hat wearing paranoid and questioning why we need to endanger our citizen's lives in order to launch a probe to Pluto. Is it that important for the advancement of civilization and juman endeavor? I'mm all for space travel, but maybe we can do it in a safer manner. NASA's own estimates put a chance of catatrophic launch failure at 1 in 200. The arguments thus far have been:

1) There are many many other dangerous things that can kill you or are dangerous.

This is irrelevant to the topic at hand. Futhermore, a lot of these things (liek swimming water being unsafe near shores) is the result of our society trying to make itself more comfortable and convenient (runoff from coal buring power plants is a byproduct of making electricity, which I'm pretty sure we could classify as pretty important to modern day life). Sending a probe to Pluto doesn't make the world a more confortable or better place (maybe slightly more interesting. One step closer to Star Trek life).

2) You don't understand radiation and/or rocket science.

You just have to research this for about 10 minutes before you come across many papers, stories, and studies about how unpredictable and dangerous setting off huge rockets is. It's a really cool thing, I'll give you. And when we launch one to deliver a communications satelite so we can watch DishTV . . . . well, even this has a purpose and slight benefit to our society. But putting an RTG on top of a rocket is always dangerous. Yes, this one is a ceramic form of plutonium. But it's still as safe as a conventional power source. If it was, would they have trained local hospitals and staff how to treat radiation poisioning and how to look for symptoms of plutonium ingestion? What that just a "we're covering all our bases" PR stunt? What about Presidential approval? Why was that needed?

3) There's been lots of launches like this before/we've all been exposed to radiation before/we're already covered in tons of radioactive dust.

This is not a convincing argument. I know it's pure conjecture and I don't have statistic to back this up (thus I will not make it a statement of fact) but it seems to me cancer rates are on a dramatic rise. Who knows if radioactive fallout si causing this, but saying "hey, you've alrady been exposed" is not convincing. Neither are appeals to skin cancer caused by the sun. Again, this is also something to watch out for, not dismiss oout of hand.

You could be killed by a bus walking across the street, that doesn't mean you shouldn't smoke.

So again, I think it was irresponsible for NASA to launch an RTG. I think it's irresponsible EVERY time they do it. If they can do it in a safer manner than a multi-stage explosive rocket, I'm all for it.

[Nick Walter]

Clearly I don't understand the "stick-your-head-in-the-sand" advice given here. There is a large difference between being a tinfoil hat wearing paranoid and questioning why we need to endanger our citizen's lives in order to launch a probe to Pluto.

What endangerment? Who is being endangered and how? Do you, in fact, have anything resembling evidence that there was any danger above and beyond that presented by a normal rocket launch?

I didn't think so.

I get so heartily tired of people panicking the second they see the words "plutonium" or "radioactive" or "nuclear".

[Graeme Dice]

There is a large difference between being a tinfoil hat wearing paranoid and questioning why we need to endanger our citizen's lives in order to launch a probe to Pluto.

The thing is that they aren't endangering citizens' lives.

Is it that important for the advancement of civilization and juman endeavor? I'mm all for space travel, but maybe we can do it in a safer manner. [quote]NASA's own estimates put a chance of catatrophic launch failure at 1 in 200.

That's catastrophic launch failure. It's not the chance that the plutonium would endanger lives.

1) There are many many other dangerous things that can kill you or are dangerous.

This is irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Actually, it's extremely relevant. Risk management is always about recognizing the likelihood that some event will happen, and the relative harm is always worth understanding.

You just have to research this for about 10 minutes before you come across many papers, stories, and studies about how unpredictable and dangerous setting off huge rockets is.

Are you now worried that self-destructing the rocket is going to kill people?

If it was, would they have trained local hospitals and staff how to treat radiation poisioning and how to look for symptoms of plutonium ingestion?

What that just a "we're covering all our bases" PR stunt?

It's a "we're covering all our bases" just in case something does happen, because it's better to be prepared for extremely unlikely events than to ignore them as if they don't exist.

3) There's been lots of launches like this before/we've all been exposed to radiation before/we're already covered in tons of radioactive dust.

This is not a convincing argument.

Yes, it is a convincing argument. It is, in fact, the most convincing argument since it means that we already know that the risks are minimal.

I know it's pure conjecture and I don't have statistic to back this up (thus I will not make it a statement of fact) but it seems to me cancer rates are on a dramatic rise.

That is conjecture.

Who knows if radioactive fallout si causing this, but saying "hey, you've alrady been exposed" is not convincing. Neither are appeals to skin cancer caused by the sun. Again, this is also something to watch out for, not dismiss oout of hand.

Why do both you and Jason ignore the fact that Plutonium is an alpha particle emitter, making it harmless unless you eat it or breathe it in? That's the reason people compare it to UV from the sun, because UV actually has the ability to penetrate the outer, dead layers of your skin. Alpha particles don't.

So again, I think it was irresponsible for NASA to launch an RTG. I think it's irresponsible EVERY time they do it. If they can do it in a safer manner than a multi-stage explosive rocket, I'm all for it.

And this is why people call you a luddite. You have absolutely no rational reason to avoid launching reactors, just vague ill-defined "fears" that make you worry.

[Jason McCullough]

When was the last shuttle explosion due to o-ring failure brought about by low temperatures? And after, what was it, 82?

Really, you seem to have an enormous grudge going on here for no discernible reason. The only thing I can think of that's as hard to try to attempt as building a single vehicle and taking it in and out of earth's atmosphere multiple times would be building a single vehicle and taking it between the top of the sea and a couple miles down. There's a history full of horrible mishaps for you!

Really, we have planes go down killing more people more often than all the space agency disasters combined. Am I to assume that you believe we ought not to send people across country on planes because of the horrible, awful, tragic waste of human lives the inevitable failure causes?

Aviation is not a good comparision. You're confusing total deaths with death rate; if commercial aviation had the failure rate of space flight, there'd be a deadly aviation incident every day. Aviation is ludicrously safe compared to space flight; it's just that aviation has a way, way bigger number of flights.

I don't see why everyone is making this such a personal thing. It's just engineering. Let me try to summarize why it bothers me again.

One, NASA's rate of failure assessment based on what I've read doesn't sound especially bulletproof; however, this isn't a spaghetti production factory, so you can probably overlook this.

Two, the cause of the original shuttle launch failure wasn't the O-ring giving out; that was the failure. The cause of that failure was that even although the temperature launch ranges were known, the O-rings were not tested across those whole ranges. That's an failure of engineering process, not a hardware problem. Same thing with the second shuttle failure - engineering process failure. People were warning of bad consequences and were ignored by management. That's why I don't think you can trust NASA like you would the FBI hunting a serial killer; they've shown they have institutional issues around the way they do their job.

Three, the only really important objection I have, is that NASA has not provided a clear description of what would happen on failure. If someone said they were going to launch plutonium over your house with a 1 in 300 failure, and wouldn't give you a description of what would happen on failure other than yammering about a physics topic you're not an expert in, would you think it was no big deal? I imagine somewhere they have an "expected corpse count" they've produced but are not releasing; it's probably absurdly low and no big deal. However, without that information, you can not form a useful assessment of how dangerous this launch is without multiple degrees.

I'd speculate they're not releasing because they think it'd be bad PR, going the "don't say anything and hope it works out ok" route which is a common organization reaction to a massive failure rather than "complete transparency". It's unfortunate.

[Jason McCullough]

Billions of dollars in lost productivity! Yup!

Sssh. :)

[mouselock]

I'd speculate they're not releasing because they think it'd be bad PR, going the "don't say anything and hope it works out ok" route which is a common organization reaction to a massive failure rather than "complete transparency". It's unfortunate.

Complete transparency only works when the public is educated and understands. It's a horrible policy when you and every other reasonably well educated person overseeing the product knows that the project is estimably safe. (1 in 200 chance of a critical launch accident. Now, factor in the chance of this damaging the nuclear material, the chance of the winds being such that they carry this material into populated areas.. etc.. etc..)

If they put all the numbers out, you know what they'd get? People claiming they make those numbers up because it's nucular materyal and dangit, there ain't no way it could be as safe as they're saying it is! You and I both know there's exactly the type of knee-jerk reaction to the word nuclear that El-Guapo had here.

It's the same bullshit that keeps people burning coal and fossil fuels instead of turning to nuclear power, because, despite the fact that the chance of detrimental consequences from nuclear power plants is far smaller than that from ongoing fossil fuel usage, if something does go wrong it's an "OMIGOSH NO!" godawful big deal because, y'know, it's nuclear. It's the same reason we still don't have friggin' irradiated foods despite the fact that doing so would save thousands of foodborne illness cases every year.

What you're arguing for is that NASA would be more trustworthy if they'd release information so that partial engineers like yourself can see all the data, at the expense of throwing the ignorant public into a tailspin over the numbers. Sounds like a hideous way to get anything done, ever. (Speaking of which, checked into how WIPP is going recently? Because, you know, it's far better to keep that shit contaminating areas where people live than to try to move it through very low population areas and get it out of everyone's hair once and for all, right?)

[Bren]

(1 in 200 chance of a critical launch accident. Now, factor in the chance of this damaging the nuclear material, the chance of the winds being such that they carry this material into populated areas.. etc.. etc..)

They cancel flights due to wind, don't they? Of course, they only do this when it could jeopardize the launch, not when it increases the possibility of distributing radioactive dust all over Orlando, right?

The fact here is, once you "factor in" these "increasingly remote chances" of disaster, that possibility still remains significant enough to be concerning to some people. This does not necessarily mean that person is an ignorant luddite. Consider for a moment the possibility that person may value human life more than you, or NASA engineers.

I too love space travel, think this mission is awesome, and love watching these ridiculous monstrosities thunder skyward. At the same time, I believe the continued use of vertical, surface launch rockets is ridiculously irresponsible in terms of safety and the environment, and I believe that NASA should be encouraged, nay, compelled to implement a better general launch technique. Twenty first fucking century, here!!!

[mouselock]

The fact here is, once you "factor in" these "increasingly remote chances" of disaster, that possibility still remains significant enough to be concerning to some people. This does not necessarily mean that person is an ignorant luddite. Consider for a moment the possibility that person may value human life more than you, or NASA engineers.


I don't disagree with this. There is some finite chance that an innocent may get killed from all sorts of things, though. Including regular NASA launches which we generally don't hear a peep about.

Remember when the shuttle broke up on entry and they said in big capital letters "IF YOU FIND DEBRIS LEAVE IT WHERE IT LANDED AND CALL THE POLICE!!!"? They did so because there was highly toxic material in the debris. Presumably this highly toxic material goes up with other space travel too. Certainly it does with the shuttle. Yet the last time the shuttle launched, people were concerned with whether the astronauts were okay or not, but there wasn't a huge hubbub over if people were going to die if the shuttle borked it again. Because it was just normal, run of the mill toxic stuff, not OMGNUCLEARMATERIAL stuff.

I believe that NASA should be encouraged, nay, compelled to implement a better general launch technique. Twenty first fucking century, here!!!

Hey, I agree. But are we supposed to not launch anything until they have that technique? If you really want to encourage this, write your congressperson and senator and tell them to get off their asses and quit cutting science funding. It's awfully hard to develop revolutions when your funding has been stagnating or shrinking for the past 8 years.

(Unless I'm missing some already developed super-launch technique that I'm not aware of yet. The only other viable technique I've seen to date is the piggybacking mid-air launch that Spaceship 1 did for the X-Prize, and that's not exactly a cargo-laden vehicle delivery mechanism there.)

[Linoleum]

The fact here is, once you "factor in" these "increasingly remote chances" of disaster, that possibility still remains significant enough to be concerning to some people.

No, it does not. In this case ignorance doesn't kill you, it just makes you think you might die.

This does not necessarily mean that person is an ignorant luddite. Consider for a moment the possibility that person may value human life more than you, or NASA engineers.

Oh those cruel heartless engineers! I value my life rather a lot and I'd have been very happy to stand at the Cape and watch the launch. And I wouldn't have been worried about the RTG, even if it had blown at t-plus 15.

At the same time, I believe the continued use of vertical, surface launch rockets is ridiculously irresponsible in terms of safety and the environment, and I believe that NASA should be encouraged, nay, compelled to implement a better general launch technique. Twenty first fucking century, here!!!

What better launch technique? The gravity well is a bitch and you aren't going to change the rocket equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation).

[TriggerHappy]

I'm guessing by better launch technique he means launching from space. Which is kinda funny, since you still have to get the materials up to the launch platform somehow...

[Jason McCullough]

Mouse, you and I do *not* know the launch is safe. We have the estimated failure rate from NASA, but we have no estimated mortality rate from failure. On the failure rate we're taking NASA's word they calculated it right and they give us the number - no big deal. On the mortality rate we're taking NASA's word that they calculated it, it's acceptable, and they won't clearly tell us what it is, which is silly.

If NASA was giving out a clear-english failure impact assessment you're right, the loons would still complain, but so what? I'm not talking about them, I'm talking about how an average citizen isn't getting the information they need to trust the decisions of a public organization. Government & public policy & responsible citizenship and all that jazz.

On a seperate note, why is your response to "information it publically available and average citizens decide it's unacceptable" to basically call the average citizens morons? Why is their opinion of the risk to their own lives silly?

[TriggerHappy]

I'm talking about how an average citizen isn't getting the information they need to trust the decisions of a public organization.

The average citizen wouldn't be able to handle that information, regardless of how minute the chance was. I'm guessing mouselock has a low opinion of the average human, and I agree. I run into 10 time as many morons as I do people I don't mind talking to. I don't exactly consider myself a genious, either.

Hell, the average citizen actually thinks that if a coin ends up heads 10 times in a row, it's more likely to be tails on the 11th throw. They obviously don't understand how probability works. Why burden them with "There's a 1 in 200 chance of a catastrophic launch failure, a 1 in 100 chance that a catastrophic launch failure would result in spread of nuclear material, a 1 in 100 chance that a spread of nuclear material would result in particles dense enough to cause damage" etc etc. Even if you translate that to "There's a 1 in 20,000 chance that this launch would cause you damage if you live within 10 miles of the launchpad" you'll get loons who live in Tampa freaking out.

If we actually knew all the probabilities of dying to various things we have no control over, I'm guessing half the world would have a nervous breakdown.

[Graeme Dice]

Mouse, you and I do *not* know the launch is safe. We have the estimated failure rate from NASA, but we have no estimated mortality rate from failure.

Did you read the initial article? The estimated radiation dosage in the event of the kind of failure that would spread the plutonium where it would affect humans was a third of what you'd receive from background sources in a typical year.

[Nick Walter]

Interestingly this whole thread increasingly tends to structurally resemble the debate between a theist and an atheist. The theist keeps saying "You can't disprove God!" or some variation thereof. The atheist keeps saying "I don't have to, it's a loony idea in the first place." The discussion of course goes nowhere.

If we substitute risk for God, that's this debate in a nutshell.

[Jason McCullough]

Did you read the initial article? The estimated radiation dosage in the event of the kind of failure that would spread the plutonium where it would affect humans was a third of what you'd receive from background sources in a typical year.

My entire point here is that's just not an impact damage assessment anyone can do anything with; it's just PR. Over what area and for how long is the above estimate? What's the expected cancer rate from the exposure? Additionally, comparing a very short-term exposure amount (failure event) to a long-term amount (yearly) is a bad analogy - X exposure in 1 second is exponentially more cancer causing than X exposure in 1 year. They should have the expected death and illness from various failure scenarios researched and on file somewhere; why can't we see them, or at least the average case impact?

Nick, I have no idea how "they won't tell us the effects of a failure in concrete terms" is like religion.

Even if you translate that to "There's a 1 in 20,000 chance that this launch would cause you damage if you live within 10 miles of the launchpad" you'll get loons who live in Tampa freaking out.

Oh, like hell. No one would freak out about a 1 in 20,000 risk and you know it. Why is everyone so leery of trusting the plebians with facts?

[Linoleum]

If NASA was giving out a clear-english failure impact assessment you're right, the loons would still complain, but so what? I'm not talking about them, I'm talking about how an average citizen isn't getting the information they need to trust the decisions of a public organization. Government & public policy & responsible citizenship and all that jazz.

There is no such thing as 'clear cut', if you want to distill down to off the cuff 'what's the worst that could happen?', as had been pointed down, that was given. You have a one in a couple hundred chance of maybe being exposed to a chest x-ray.

The 'average' citizen doesn't want to read thousands and thousands of pages of government paperwork. The media doesn't want to read it either, it's much easier to do a three-minute segment with Concerned Experts and engineers who get thirty seconds to try and explain how physics and probability works.

On a seperate note, why is your response to "information it publically available and average citizens decide it's unacceptable" to basically call the average citizens morons? Why is their opinion of the risk to their own lives silly?

Don't ask me, I'm scarred from the laughter from my fears of chewing gum, rubbing my belly and patting the top of my head at the same time. I could choke! Choke! Bastards, all of them.

[Linoleum]

Additionally, comparing a very short-term exposure amount (failure event) to a long-term amount (yearly) is a bad analogy - X exposure in 1 second is exponentially more cancer causing than X exposure in 1 year.

Short-term exposure? That isn't even an issue here. You have it completely backwards: the only significant health hazard would be long-term exposure specifically caused by plutonium entering the body. Looking at the gamma emission rates (http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00314834.pdf) if I had a 25kg chunk of Pu-238 sitting next to me right now I'm not going to turn it into my new paperweight, but neither would I sweat finishing this post and seeing what new inanity has made its way onto the forum.

They should have the expected death and illness from various failure scenarios researched and on file somewhere; why can't we see them, or at least the average case impact?

Have you bothered to look? Made a couple inquiries? Should NASA have emailed you a thousand page PDF? I once asked the US Fire Administration for statistics on the average incidence of firehouse fires in the US and they were most helpful. No one is stopping you.

Oh, like hell. No one would freak out about a 1 in 20,000 risk and you know it. Why is everyone so leery of trusting the plebians with facts?

Because they think they'll win the lottery?

[MikeSofaer]

Jason, I think you are probably wrong about being unable to see them. My understanding of the workings of NASA is that very little of what they do is classified and everything else is available upon request. You can see the entire safety analysis if you want to, call up NASA and ask for it. No one in the media appears to care enough to do an independant review of that analysis. So who is at fault here? The average person for not worrying enough about the issue to check? The media for not thinking it's worth their time to check? NASA for not putting making a web site that presents everything in cascading detail so you can learn as much as you want about the safety analysis, even though almost no one would get past the overview?

[Jason McCullough]

Don't ask me about the short-term vs. long-term thing; it was apparently NASA that thought a year's exposure to background radiation was a useful analogy.

I haven't called NASA, no, but there's nothing in the media coverage and I can't find it on their website.

[Squirrel Killer]

Did you read the initial article? The estimated radiation dosage in the event of the kind of failure that would spread the plutonium where it would affect humans was a third of what you'd receive from background sources in a typical year.
As if you could believe them.

[MikeSofaer]

Re "I can't find": You keep using this phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/index.cgi?method=search&limit=25&offset=0&mode=simple&order=DESC&keywords=RTG+risk

[Jason McCullough]

Ah ha! The magic words are environmental impact statement (http://spacescience.nasa.gov/admin/pubs/plutoeis/). It's in section 4.1.4.

Expected "mean health effects" (which I think is fatal cancer, hard to tell) for exposure by launch stage - this assumes a failure, all of the failure chances are quite low:

Pre-launch: 4.8.
Early launch: 0.4. However, there's a tremendously unlikely (1 in 1.4 to 18 million) release scenario with 102.
Late launch: 0.
Pre-orbit: 0.002.
Orbit: 0.02.

On page 2-33 there's a section that has the summary they should be using: regional individual risk (defined as incurring a fatal cancer) is 1 in 2 billion; highest individual risk at all is 1 in 1 million; globally, 1 in 2 trillion. Why they don't just use those numbers I have no idea; no one gives a damn about a 1 in 2 billion exposure rate.

So they've got them, the issue is that the PR people aren't saying them and the press is using what the PR people say. Urg.

ElGuapo, does that belie your concerns?

[shift6]

Have Microsoft bugs killed people and destroyed billions of dollars in hardware? No.
Are we counting Naval submarines that shut down during testing and need to be towed back into base? Well, it was during "testing" so I guess not.

There's a reason MS products haven't caused the loss of billions of dollars or lives. No one who makes responsible decisions to protect those kinds of assets use them.

I'm guessing by better launch technique he means launching from space. Which is kinda funny, since you still have to get the materials up to the launch platform somehow...
My understanding is that low-orbital plane-type deals and high-altitude balloons are some options that are being explored. I mean for getting small payloads up there to a kind of "mid-height" launch platform.

On a seperate note, why is your response to "information it publically available and average citizens decide it's unacceptable" to basically call the average citizens morons? Why is their opinion of the risk to their own lives silly?
The average citizen's knee jerks almost as high, hard, and fast as yours and ElGuapo's did in this thread when they hear the word "nuclear". Goddamn if we wouldn't have extremely cheap electricity and plenty of oil if we weren't moving towards earth-based nuclear reactors, except for... wait for it... MISINFORMED PUBLIC OPINION!

So they've got them, the issue is that the PR people aren't saying them and the press is using what the PR people say. Urg.
So are you blaming the media, NASA, the man on the street, or your own inability to find the info? Regis wants your final answer.

[XPav]

Are we counting Naval submarines that shut down during testing and need to be towed back into base? Well, it was during "testing" so I guess not.

There's a reason MS products haven't caused the loss of billions of dollars or lives. No one who makes responsible decisions to protect those kinds of assets use them.

I'll defend Microsoft here.

1) It was a cruiser
2) It wasn't the OS that failed, it was the fucking lousy software that some poor Navy PM contracted to have written and installed on the cruiser. If I write a shitty program and server application that crash when I type "SHIT, BONERZ!" into a box expecting the "how fast should the ship go?" data, well, that's not Microsoft's fault, that's mine, and points out the fact that I didn't test my fucking code.

BTW, using Microsoft stuff is becoming more common in certain defense applications. The OS, especially in it's embedded incarnations, isn't bad. Sure, it's not real time and you're not going to be lauching space probes with it, but development productivity, especially for database and user interfaces is light years past any sort of custom solution. When it really comes down to it, do you really want to write and test a millions lines of software to get a decent user interface when you can pull an off-the-shelf solution, tested, embedded solution from Microsoft?

[shift6]

Right about the cruiser not being a sub, my bad on that. However, I'm not in agreement that it was a simple application error. The guy typed a zero in a field in a database app, where admittedly he shouldn't have, and the resulting buffer overflow crashed the whole damn network. So I guess it's a matter of defining whether or not protecting from buffer overflows is the responsibility of the app, the OS, or both. There's also something to be said about the OS that fails to protect from a user-mode app that is able to bring down a system-level multinode network due to a typo as well.

I know their embedded stuff is getting good. I'm not an MS hater or anything. But if J-dizzle gets to throw out the baby with the bathwater for NASA (ie two fatal errors in hundreds of projects over like 30 years), well so do I.

[Jason McCullough]

I'd say the Navy was being goofballs using MS software in the first place for something like that. It's explicitly not designed to give you military-grade reliability.

The average citizen's knee jerks almost as high, hard, and fast as yours and ElGuapo's did in this thread when they hear the word "nuclear". Goddamn if we wouldn't have extremely cheap electricity and plenty of oil if we weren't moving towards earth-based nuclear reactors, except for... wait for it... MISINFORMED PUBLIC OPINION!

I said that I didn't think it was a problem, only that I couldn't find the information indicating it wasn't a problem, so it's perfectly reasonable to worry - NASA is only giving out PR that communicates nothing about risk. Turns out that yes, it's not a big risk; why NASA doesn't put out "1 in 2 billion" I have no idea. You're assuming I'm opposed to the launch/spaceflight in general/nuclear power; I'm not, I'm just opposed to lack of transparency in public risks.

Nuclear reactors are a seperate discussion, but what the hell. Last I read even if you assume that NIMBY and legal challenges go away, nuclear reactors are not that much cheaper than oil, and additionally there's only enough uranium in the world for something like a 20 year supply if we replaced oil consumption with them.

[XPav]

Right about the cruiser not being a sub, my bad on that. However, I'm not in agreement that it was a simple application error. The guy typed a zero in a field in a database app, where admittedly he shouldn't have, and the resulting buffer overflow crashed the whole damn network.
Here's the thing -- that entire story is so apocryphal that the exagerrations stand out in my mind. Lets say that idiot systems and software engineers setup a system with a central server that ran a custom app. Lets say that all commands go back to that server. Let's say the bad value gets into the server and knocks the server process down. All the workstations are going to do shit, because the server's down. Hence, the network's down.

I've worked with a few SCADA systems in my day, and many of them are built on Microsoft technology. Uniformly, they all kinda suck.

[Ben Sones]

Turns out that yes, it's not a big risk; why NASA doesn't put out "1 in 2 billion" I have no idea.

For the same reason airline captains don't pop on the intercom before takeoff to let everyone know that there is a 1 in 52.6 million chance that the plane might crash and kill everyone onboard.

[shift6]

I'd say the Navy was being goofballs using MS software in the first place for something like that. It's explicitly not designed to give you military-grade reliability.
OK. But then it seems to me that grading riskiness isn't a fair comparison if you're only talking about things that are extremely risky to begin with (in terms of saving lives). Is NASA's engineering just horrible and shitty and so forth, or has it done exceedingly well given the challenges they face? If there is a way to quantify the odds of killing a team in manned space flight, let's say it is 1 in 10. If you send up 20 shuttles and lose 1, you're beating the odds, but you still had 5% fatalities.

Turns out that yes, it's not a big risk; why NASA doesn't put out "1 in 2 billion" I have no idea.
Consider this: even here where we have reasonably intelligent people who can read the article for themselves, almost everyone missed this: "You have a 1-in-200 chance you might have a launch accident of which half of those have the potential for a small release," said Randy Scott, a NASA manager overseeing the agency's emergency response team. So it isn't even 1 in 200, it's about 1 in 400. Even the numbers they did publish were ignored by a reasonably intelligent group of readers who had access to the original article. Whether that was hyperbole or accident doesn't even matter.

Nuclear reactors are a seperate discussion, but what the hell. Last I read even if you assume that NIMBY and legal challenges go away, nuclear reactors are not that much cheaper than oil, and additionally there's only enough uranium in the world for something like a 20 year supply if we replaced oil consumption with them.
Wow. Not even gonna get started.

Here's the thing -- that entire story is so apocryphal that the exagerrations stand out in my mind. Lets say that idiot systems and software engineers setup a system with a central server that ran a custom app. Lets say that all commands go back to that server. Let's say the bad value gets into the server and knocks the server process down. All the workstations are going to do shit, because the server's down. Hence, the network's down.
Oh, I get it. I just don't know if I'd agree to defend MS in this case. Seems to me there's plenty of blame to go around.

That's like saying if Diebold builds (in)secure e-voting booths on MS Windows and MS Access; yes, they are responsible for the retarded architecture decisions, but doesn't MS hold responsibility for the code which they claim maintains an OS secure and stable enough for this type of use?

[Jason McCullough]

For the same reason airline captains don't pop on the intercom before takeoff to let everyone know that there is a 1 in 52.6 million chance that the plane might crash and kill everyone onboard.

I don't think that's a good analogy; they don't do that because no one is asking. If someone has never ridden on a plane before and knows nothing about commerical air (like in the this case, where the general public doesn't know shit about plutonium) they'd be perfectly reasonable in asking for a number like that, no? Why is there response to "how risky it is" some useless analogy about annual radiation exposure?

[TriggerHappy]

Oh, like hell. No one would freak out about a 1 in 20,000 risk and you know it. Why is everyone so leery of trusting the plebians with facts?

Wait. You've *never* met someone who's scared to fly on a commercial airline?

[Jason McCullough]

Sure, but people don't know that the actual risk of death is like 1,000 times more unlikely than that.

[TriggerHappy]

That pretty much proves my point I think. Even with the actual risk available to anyone who cares, people still freak out.

[Jason McCullough]

That pretty much proves my point I think. Even with the actual risk available to anyone who cares, people still freak out.

There's a difference between "I can find out what the risk of crashing in an airplane is if I know that stuff like that can be popped out of google with the proper search query" and "the average citizen knows the risk of a plane crashing." People aren't statistical experts, so when all they hear is people saying "air travel is very safe blah blah blah no numbers" on television, interspersed with occasional plane crashes killing hundreds of people, they stay uneasy. If they would just say "there are so many flights going on all the time that the occasional crash amounts to 1 in 20 million" it might actually communicate useful information.

[Ben Sones]

I don't think that's a good analogy; they don't do that because no one is asking. If someone has never ridden on a plane before and knows nothing about commerical air (like in the this case, where the general public doesn't know shit about plutonium) they'd be perfectly reasonable in asking for a number like that, no?

I sincerely doubt that an airline would just toss out some odds if someone asked them how safe it was to fly. They would most likely try to put it in terms that the average person can grok (like telling them flying is safer than driving, or that they are more likely to be killed by a meteor than killed in a plane crash, etc.), which is exactly what NASA did. The reason they'd do it is because most people have absurd misconceptions when it comes to probability and statistics. Just look at how many people buy lottery tickets.

[Jason McCullough]

I sincerely doubt that an airline would just toss out some odds if someone asked them how safe it was to fly. They would most likely try to put it in terms that the average person can grok (like telling them flying is safer than driving, or that they are more likely to be killed by a meteor than killed in a plane crash, etc.), which is exactly what NASA did.

I'm of the opinion it just isn't working. The net effect isn't to convince people it's safe; it's to confuse them into giving up caring.

The popularity of the lottery is a bad example; people don't buy lottery tickets because they expect to win, they buy them because it's fun and the cash goes to schools anyway.

[Mike O'Malley]

I have never, ever heard someone claim this motivation for buying a lottery ticket.

[MikeJ]

I have never, ever heard someone claim this motivation for buying a lottery ticket.

When I've asked people, they mostly say it's fun to think about winning. At least in Ontario, it's definitely true that quite a bit of money gets siphoned off for good causes. Though I never met anyone who claimed that part as their motivation.

I usually buy 2 or 3 tickets a year, because I think I'm lucky after winning a potted plant in 4th grade.

[Jason McCullough]

Mike, no one says "well it goes to a good cause" as a motiviation, but it's the reason they buy them rather than doing it at a casino or something. It lowers the downsides (wasting money - what it goes to matters to people) and lets them keep the upsides (the fun of hoping you might win.)

[TriggerHappy]

people don't buy lottery tickets because they expect to win

I've known quite a few people who buy them expecting to hit it big eventually. It's certainly possible I've just run into more stupid people than you have, though.

[Ben Sones]

I have never, ever heard someone claim this motivation for buying a lottery ticket.

I haven't, either. I think most people buy them because they could win, even if the possibility is remote. And I guess also because the investment is so tiny that it's not much of a loss for you even if you lose. But strictly by the odds, you'd probably have as good a chance getting rich if you threw a $1 into the trash as you would if you spent it on a lottery ticket.