Posted on 20-1-2002

Going Where No Man Wants To
By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D., introduction by Alan Marston

Last week TV1 started screening a BBC series called `S P A C E'. An
appropriate title in my opinion, if it is interpretted as meaning that the
space between points of interest and value greatly exceeds programme
content - in short, what a rude one, or maybe more to the point, what a
cheap one.

S P A C E uses Sam Neil, who like the BBC has gone from outside the mall
(maul) pissing in to insider pissing out. If I was still a science teacher
facing a wordly forth form I'd be risking a riot to show them S P A C E. If
as I suspect it is the forth formers and below of this world that the
corporates aim at in their drive for low cost high profit in the
entertainment industry, then the corporate marketing heads should start
rolling pretty soon. As for the rest of the population ... I don't know, I
suspect I'm not too representative because the `entertainment' industry
gives me indigestion.

Meanwhile, back in the centre of space-science, NASA, the entertainment
value or more to the point, the mass distraction and ego-boost value of
`going where no man has gone before' is losing its pull. Or is Jackie
Giuliano just another former insider complaining hard enough to get kicked
upstairs? Over and out.

............

The world is a sacred vessel
Not to be acted upon.
Whoever acts upon it
destroys it.
Whoever grasps it
loses it.

Lao Tzu (from the Tao Te Ching)

I spent nearly 20 years working in America's space program. At the time, I
saw it as a grand dream, an opportunity for humanity to unite in the
exploration of the universe. I defended the expenditures, pointing out the
dramatic benefits that could be derived from finding a common cause for the
Earth's people. But tragically, as with nearly everything touched by the
U.S. government, waste on a grand scale came to rule the land. I found I
could no longer support an enterprise that condoned the intentional
destruction of multi-million dollar spacecraft and the wanton pollution of
other worlds in our solar system. Once again the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA), ironically, while under intense criticism for
the vast cost overruns of the International Space Station program, has
decided to prematurely end the life of one of the human race's grandest
achievements.

Later this year, controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA's lead
center for the robotic exploration of the Solar System, and the facility
where I spent many years, will upload the last command sequence to the
Galileo spacecraft. Launched on October 18, 1989, the Galileo craft has
been in orbit around the gas giant Jupiter since 1995, sending back
incredible pictures and data, advancing our knowledge of our neighborhood
in space. The program cost $1.4 billion. Because funding technically runs
out next year, NASA will not only stop
communicating with this amazing, and expensive, machine, but it will
intentionally crash it into the atmosphere of Jupiter in September 2003,
dispersing its power source of 15.6 kilograms (34.4 pounds) of
radioactive plutonium-238 and other hazardous wastes, around that giant
planet.

Even though the heat from the plutonium would keep generating power for the
craft for many years, once the propellant used to point the spacecraft at
Earth runs out, commands could no longer be sent and data could not be
received. The propellant is running out, but the timing of this ending is
because of budgetary shortsightedness, not real needs. Besides the
incredible waste of prematurely destroying a craft that took years to build
and to travel to another world, we are once again spreading our pollution
to worlds about which we know very little.

One of my few television indulgences these days, after my eight month old
son goes to bed, is watching the latest series in the Star Trek saga,
"Enterprise." Watching it these last few weeks has reminded me of the grand
ideals that I and my colleagues entered the space program to achieve. The
inspiring television tales of the first steps of humans off of the Earth
have been a sharp contrast to the stark reality of the real life space
program, a program fraught with lack of direction and monumentally
ludicrous choices. Galileo has been in orbit around Jupiter more than three
times longer than its originally planned mission. The spacecraft has
survived about three and a half times as much exposure to radiation from
Jupiter's radiation belts as it was designed to withstand. It has taken 33
loops around Jupiter, flying near the closest moon, Io, six times and near
the other three of Jupiter's planet-sized moons - Europa, Ganymede and
Callisto - a total of 27 times.
The Galileo spacecraft's prime mission was to spend two years studying
Jupiter, its moons and its magnetic environment. When that original mission
ended in December 1997, it was followed by a two year extended mission,
scheduled to end in January 2000. The mission was extended again.

While NASA tries to make these extensions sound like gifts that have
already made use of a spacecraft living beyond its expected lifetime, they
are actually the result of the budget battles that constantly go on in
Congress. Rather than seek approval for what is the true life of the
mission, NASA budgeters play the game by only asking for a couple of years
funding at a time, hoping for a more favorable budget climate when that end
of mission comes. This philosophy has contributed to the astronomical cost
overruns of the space station program.

I worked on the Galileo mission before it was launched, and we all knew it
would last beyond the two years Congress was being asked to fund. It was
hard to constantly manipulate the truth by telling the outside world that
the spacecraft mission was only two years long. We all knew that were
weren't going to be spending 10 years building the spacecraft and taking
six years to get to Jupiter, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars
to just take data for two years. We knew that NASA would get more money
when that time was up. But the game was afoot and unstoppable. Jet
Propulsion Laboratory engineer Robert Gounley said in an article about the
mission, "By 2004 or so, the gas gauge will read empty and Galileo will
become a free-floater, unable to change course. Chances are, it will orbit
around Jupiter for millions of years without incident. Galileo, however,
was not sterilized during its assembly. A few traces of terrestrial life
might yet endure in some of the more heavily shielded electronics bays.
There is the possibility, difficult to quantify, that someday Galileo will
collide with Europa and leave traces of terrestrial life there."

Since oceans have been discovered beneath the frozen ice of Jupiter's moon
Europa, suggesting the possibility of the early beginnings of life, these
concerns sound worth noting. But while the concerns about contaminating
Europa with Earth microbes are interesting, even though the possibility of
the spacecraft making it there on its own are remote, it is disappointing
that NASA doesn't have any concern about dumping plutonium or our space
junk around the Solar System. Project scientists would say, of course, that
adding the plutonium to Jupiter's atmosphere will make no difference. But
such a statement reveals the constant inconsistencies in how science is
practiced today. The reality is that scientists have no better idea of what
the implications of dumping plutonium into Jupiter's atmosphere are than
they do of what affect some Earth microbes might have on
Europa. But humans will always pick the "truth" that corresponds the
closest to their desired objectives.
NASA and JPL project managers look at the environmental assessment process
and any comments from the public about spreading our waste in space as a
bother and an annoyance. It shows in their documents and in their
discussions. I have sat in many meetings where the public has been called
"stupid" and the environmental assessment process has been called a big
waste of time and money.

A NASA created composite of Galileo images from the Jovian system, includes
the edge of Jupiter with its Great Red Spot, and Jupiter's four largest
moons. From top to bottom, the moons shown are Io, Europa, Ganymede and
Callisto. Also, engineers are trained to downplay risks. They consider a
risk of one in a million insignificant. But to a lay person who has seen
the results of thousands of environmental accidents where the risk was
supposedly very low, one in a million seems quite possible. Engineers love
to manipulate statistics.
This won't be the first time we have ended the life of a spacecraft
prematurely and dumped our toxic junk
on another world. In 1998, the Lunar Prospector spacecraft was crashed on
the Moon, looking for water. It didn't find any water, but it left behind
smashed spacecraft remains. Although its power source is provided by
batteries charged by sunlight, those nickel-cadmium batteries now littering
the Moon's surface are classified as a hazardous waste on the Earth.

In 1994, controllers crashed the Magellan spacecraft into Venus when the
money ran out, although the spacecraft had considerable life left in it.
And the future Europa Orbiter plans to crash its nine kilograms of
plutonium on Jupiter's moon Europa, the very moon Galileo scientists want
to protect, a moon that could harbor the beginnings of life. NASA will
protect another world from Earth microbes, but has no problem spreading
deadly nuclear material around. Of course, how can we get anyone to be
concerned about the possible harmful effects of dumping our radioactive
waste on other worlds when modern science condones illness, cancers, and
even deaths if they advance a technology or turn a profit. Our culture has
made it OK to release a drug if the side effects "only" kill two percent of
the users under certain circumstances. v NASA's new administrator should
clean up the sloppy goal selection process for space exploration missions
and insist that future mission designs include ways to stop spreading our
hazardous waste around the Solar System.

Otherwise, future space explorers will find worlds contaminated in ways we
can't possibly imagine. Maybe the Star Trek mantra needs to be changed to
"boldly go where no one has trashed or polluted before." That, it turns
out, will be a much more difficult mission.