Word: galileo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...three attorneys on the staff of his Washington- based Foundation on Economic Trends file about six lawsuits and threaten more. Among other causes, he has battled surrogate motherhood, animal patenting and agricultural experiments involving open-air use of genetically altered bacteria. He tried to delay the launch of the Galileo spacecraft by warning that a shuttle explosion could rain plutonium on Florida. In Wisconsin he has helped start a boycott of dairy products from cows that are being fed a genetically engineered growth hormone. Indeed, Rifkin's success at blocking research projects led one biotech newsletter to label...
...shuttle Atlantis lifts off this week from its Cape Canaveral launch pad as planned, astronomers will let out a long-delayed cheer. At last the Galileo mission, which has languished for more than a decade because of technical debates and the Challenger explosion, will be getting under way. Astronauts on Atlantis will release the Galileo spacecraft, setting it on a six-year, 2.5 billion-mile journey to Jupiter. There the probe will take the first direct measurements of the planet's dense clouds and hurricane-like winds...
...doubt the scientific value of the Galileo flight. Nonetheless, a sharp controversy has dogged the mission. At issue is the space probe's power source: two radioisotope thermoelectric generators that are fueled by almost 50 lbs. of highly radioactive plutonium 238. Antinuclear groups, led by the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice and the Washington-based Christic Institute, have claimed that the generators are unsafe. Their view is shared by Richard Cuddihy, an analyst with the Inhalation Toxicology Research Center in Albuquerque and the lone dissenter on the federal interagency panel that recommended a go-ahead for the Galileo program...
Opponents charge that a disaster during launch could spew large amounts of radioactive fallout throughout Florida and cause 2,000 cases of lung, bone and liver cancer. The danger, they say, does not end with a successful takeoff. To gather momentum, the Galileo spacecraft will first make a swing around Venus and two around the earth before hurtling off to Jupiter. Critics are concerned that the vehicle could collide with the earth during close flybys...
...chances of plutonium being released in an aborted mission are no greater than 1 in 1,428. Declares Dudley McConnell, nuclear safety manager for NASA: "You have a thousand times greater chance of dying on the ground from debris falling from an airplane crash than you do from the Galileo mission." Critics, though, remain unconvinced by such assurances. For them, the only real comfort will come when Galileo is gone from earth...