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Sunday, November 20, 2011

Karl Grossman On Curiosity

The Curiosity is NASA's Mars Science Rover, which is powered by Pu-238.  Mr. Grossman is fixated on the rover's power source.  Curious, isn't it?  Not really, Mr. Grossman enjoys a long history of fear mongering.


Grossman cherrypicks the EIS emphasizing the highly unlikely scenarios while failing to mention the likely ones.  The entire EIS can be found here.  There is nothing to fear, but propagandists like Mr. Grossman.

Bon voyage on the 25th, Curiosity!

3 comments:

  1. Karl Grossman is not fear mongering concerning NASA's launch (with its low risk scenarios that carry potentially huge public health costs). He is concerned that we are not being fearful enough. Grossman is well informed, and convinced that if an early phase of the MSL mission turns into a repeat of the 1964 SNAP 9A satellite reentry, then we'd have about 5 times more fatal lung cancers than the first Pu-burnup. How many cancers? Even Grossman is humbly being cautious about that. Radiobiologists like the late John Gofman thought the SNAP 9A cancer burden result was a number greater than zero. That is too much risk when NASA could - yes, they really could (despite the 'dust' problem) - use solar technology.

    I also disagree on the point about propaganda. I think NASA's propagandizing about the plutonium power source is the thing that's curious when they could scale back the mission's scope by 10%, maybe 20%, using solar.

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  2. The overall cancer risk is 0.2 latent cancer fatalities, with a 1 in 220 chance of occurring.

    The main issue isn't dust, it's the lack of sunlight in winter, which would limit the mission's scope by more than 50% overall.

    Propaganda is an ugly habit.

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  3. What a piss pot (beardy guy in video). F*** sake cheer up ;)

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