Re: SPACE: NASA says the 'N' word...

From: namacdon (namacdon@ole.augie.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 08 2002 - 13:06:15 MST


>A few years ago, when NASA was launching the Cassini Probe, Michio Kaku
>led the protests in public and in the scientific community against
>launching the probe, despite the fact we'd already spent a billion and a
>half bucks on the thing, all because it used RTGs for power. Kaku
>claimed that the risks outweighed the benefits, and all sorts of other
>drivel that never happened. Kaku claimed that we could send four smaller
>probes using only solar power to Saturn for the same price, although
>with fewer instruments and with most of the mass of the probes being
>solar panels.

Ah... I was not aware of this. He didn't seem anti-nuclear at all in
Visions, between his harping on ion drives and fusion reactors.

> Of course, those probes would be ones that HIS university
>group would design and build....

That explains quite a bit.

-Nicq MacDonald



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