Will Columbia Disaster Embolden Nuclear Protesters

I haven't read the LA Times article. The administration and the NASA
administrator are crystal clear that they intend to start an nuclear
propulsion program to speed exploration of the outer solar system.
This comes from Space News (which I read every week) and other places.
If you really like Mars and the outer solar system this is probably a
good thing, but it's not important for space colonization. For that we
need better launch vehicles far more.

The safety concerns can probably be addressed, but they are real and
should not be ignored or belittled. Furthermore, as I said before, the
credibility of those who claim nuclear is safe has been strained to the
breaking point by past performance. Thus, safety work must be
transparent, of extremely high quality, and never, never lie or mislead
about anything in any way.

On Monday, February 3, 2003, at 04:31 PM, Brad Walsh wrote:

> The first part of your statement (not excerpted here) referred to the
> LA
> Times article about NASA pushing for nuclear propulsion technologies to
> enable a Mars mission--that article was badly done, and NASA confirms
> that
> no such program is in place. I urge you to see some of the followup
> reporting done on that piece at SpaceDaily.com or elsewhere.

The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr.
Tito going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html