- #36
rootone
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Saturn now has some Plutonium, in it's atmosphere.
That sure will be interesting to alien astronomers.
That sure will be interesting to alien astronomers.
Or to possible future inteligent lifeforms (from the moons). If they solve the mystery they will attribute it to an "ancient alien probe" ...rootone said:Saturn now has some Plutonium, in it's atmosphere.
That sure will be interesting to alien astronomers.
Good point. Also I was kind of joking in the post above that, but: (Question to everyone)nikkkom said:Any Pu compounds are not likely to stay in the upper atmosphere for long. They are too heavy.
fanieh said:Had Cassini exploded on takeoff from the failing rocket engine, wouldn't it have spread the Plutonium to the Earth atmosphere?
fanieh said:What is the effect of this? How much radiation can each person receive.
The terrestrial flyby was the final instance when the probe posed any conceivable danger to human beings. The maneuver was successful, with Cassini passing by 1,171 km (728 mi) above the Earth on August 18, 1999.[47] Had there been any malfunction causing the probe to collide with the Earth, NASA's complete environmental impact study estimated that, in the worst case (with an acute angle of entry in which Cassini would gradually burn up), a significant fraction of the 33 kg[34] of plutonium-238 inside the RTGs would have been dispersed into the Earth's atmosphere so that up to five billion people (i.e. almost the entire terrestrial population) could have been exposed, causing up to an estimated 5,000 additional cancer deaths over the subsequent decades[48] (0.0005 per cent, i.e. a fraction 0.000005, of a billion cancer deaths expected anyway from other causes; the product is incorrectly calculated elsewhere[49] as 500,000 deaths). However, the chance of this happening were estimated to be less than one in one million.
fanieh said:Maybe it shouldn't have taken off as it can give precedence for other probes to go up too.
The folks at NASA/DOE have things worked out pretty well,Drakkith said:but the RTG's are fairly robust if I remember correctly. They may have had a good chance of surviving relatively intact.
fanieh said:My only memory of Cassini was when my friends were signing petition to avoid its launch sometime in 1997. I could recall the fear in everyone.
I assume he means explosion upon take off (cf. his first post earlier ...)Drakkith said:Fear of what?
Drakkith said:Fear of what?
The amount of plutonium is only a kg or so.fanieh said:fear of Cassini failure in the atmosphere contaminating Earth with all its nuclear payload batteries.
fanieh said:anyway. if an ICBM was hit by an THAAD kinetic missile in the upper atmosphere. what would produce more radiation.. the disintegrating ICBM or the exploding Cassini in the upper atmosphere?