Xref: utzoo sci.space:4519 sci.space.shuttle:530
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!ge-dab!codas!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Payload of shuttle flight directly after last Challenger.
Message-ID: <3240@killer.UUCP>
Date: 7 Feb 88 22:05:13 GMT
References: <365@flatline.UUCP>
Organization: Bayou Telecommunications
Lines: 30

in article <365@flatline.UUCP>, erict@flatline.UUCP (eric townsend) says:
> My 'friend the nut case' has a very good point.  What if the rocket/shuttle
> /whatever that's carrying 46 pounds of plutonium goes blooie in lower
> atmosphere?  You gonna be ready to live inside for the next few years?
  46 pounds of plutonium might irradiate a stretch of ocean pretty badly, but
not much worse. It won't explode. You need very high pressures to compress
plutonium to critical mass, and a shuttle explosion would tend to expand
outwards (now you know why atomic bombs have heavy cases?). Even if it did
explode, the global effects would be no worse than atmospheric testing in the
40's and 50's... 

> I'm not.  I'd much rather spend money getting us a base on the moon, 
> and just mine/manufacture all the reactor fuel there..  
  The moon, like most other places in the solar system, is very short on
fissionables. Be difficult to mine anything there in reasonable quantities.
The moon doesn't have the seismic and tidal activities that have concentrated
such materials here on Earth. There's little difference between carrying 46
pounds of plutonium and 4 tons of raw uranium ore, risk-wise, besides the
costs involved... so processing it on the moon would be no help, either.

> Hey, do you attend the University of Slow Learners, by any chance??      :-)
No no, you got it all wrong! That's "U Stand in Line"! :-)
> (I used to live in La. too.... get out of the state while you still can! :-)
Believe me, I don't intend to hang around here one moment more than I have 
to... no smiley there.

Eric Lee Green  elg@usl.CSNET     Asimov Cocktail,n., A verbal bomb
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg              detonated by the mention of any
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191              subject, resulting in an explosion
Lafayette, LA 70509                    of at least 5,000 words.