Well, considering that some half dozen or so of these units have survived
re-entry (every one that did reenter), and a few have even be recovered and
reused on other spacecraft, there should be plenty of confidence in our
technology. Instead, he pointed at the one incident of a Russian nuclear
generator device re-entering in Canada that was not designed with anywhere near
the level of relaibility that ours were, and using that incident to tar all use
of nuclear power in space, much as our own light water reactors get tarred by
people comparing them to Chernobyl, when the Chernobyl technology was a) less
reliable and b) intentionally put into near meltdown condition. Kaku knows all of
these things, he is more interested in getting media face time to make himself
into the Carl Sagan of the 21st century than in scientific objectivity.
Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 5/16/00 5:40:16 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> retroman@turbont.net writes:
>
> << Thats primarily my concern. Anyone who calls themselves a scientist
> should have the integrity to acknowledge that a) the chances of it
> hitting earth were infinitesimal, b) if they did hit earth, they were
> designed to survive reentry and impact intact without leakage. His tv
> lobbying over that issue was disgusting and dishonest >>
> He was dishonest IF he could see beyond his own personal prejudices which
> usually blind a person (all of us) into thinking beyond the current paradigm.
> If he really knew better (had confidence in the reentry shielding
> engineering) he might've given thought to changing his mind. Similarly, a lot
> of the best scientists had a prejudice in Favor of uranium 235,BWR style
> power plants, before the practical testing and evaluation had been performed.
> Again its a matter of people discovering the truth and deciding what is
> important.
> Mitch
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:11:17 MDT