When Ignorance Is Cash, Tis Folly To Be Wise
The criticism of NASA's nuclear-initiative Project Prometheus has begun.
This UPI page has some dumb quotes, but you have to scroll down through some other articles to get to them.
Basically, some people fail to understand that using nuclear power on a long-range spacecraft is not a military application. Once you use the word nuclear, you might as well begin the bombing.
Reacting to NASA's strategic plan, Alice Slater, director of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, had this to say: "Hopes for meaningful progress towards nuclear disarmament have been shattered, particularly by the shameless grab to dominate space."
And, then there are those brilliant souls who decide to fight against what they think the agency is planning, without even finding out what it is.
Karl Grossman, a professor at the State University of New York, is author of "The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat to Our Planet": "At all of our peril, O'Keefe is moving to expand NASA's program of using nuclear power in space -- including reviving the decades-old notion of building nuclear-powered spacecraft. What if the Columbia shuttle had been nuclear-powered? Nuclear debris would have spread over Texas and Louisiana. Still, two days after the Columbia tragedy, NASA advanced its new $3 billion space nuclear program, Project Prometheus. It is being pushed despite the development of new safe space energy systems, including solar-electric propulsion and solar sails."
I guess if you point out that at the point the agency is only working towards using nuclear power for long-range spacecraft that would not be flying on Earth, it would be a lot tougher to sell books about the "Threat To Our Planet." Why learn about what's really going on, when spreading ignorance keeps the cash coming?

:: :: 09:08 :: David :: [permalink] ::