ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (02/21/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Thursday, February 20, 1986 5:42PM
Volume 6, Issue 49
Today's Topics:
Lobby day
Plutonium
Sound political question on SDI from, would you belive, Boskone?
More Plutonium/Shuttle
Plutonium
US Missiles and SRB Seals
Censorship
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Date: Tuesday, 18 February 1986 02:00-EST
From: Timothy M. Wright <MT354TMW%YALEVMX.BITNET at WISCVM.WISC.EDU>
To: <ARMS-D-REQUEST at MIT-MC.ARPA>
Re: lobby day
On Thursday, April 17, the 3rd annual Lobby Day to End the Arms Race will
be held in Washington, DC. The University of Virginia chapter of United
Campuses to End Nuclear War (UCAM) is the national sponsor, and Yale Students
for Nuclear Disarmament (YSND) is the New England coordinator.
The chief parts of Lobby Day are appointments that students from various
districts make with their representatives and senators. Lobby Day gives them
an opportunity to meet their elected officials face-to-face. Needless to say,
in order to make these appointments, congrssional districts have to be
organized soon.
I encourage anyone at a college or university who is willing to be a
contact or knows of a group or individual willing to fill this role to send me
a note to that effect. Please include a mailing address, because I will be
sending some materials that will need to be copied.
My full address (should the heading be insufficient) is
MT354TMW%YALEVMX.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Thank you.
--tim
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Date: 18 FEB 86 12:49-EDT
From: GROSS%BCVAX3.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Subject: Plutonium
A bit more about the problems of vaporized plutonium:
Plutonium is dangerous because of its alpha emission. Pu(III) is
similar in size to Fe(III) and so has a similar biological
distribution. What happens is that the Pu(III) is delivered by
Fe(III) transport systems to sites requiring Fe, i.e. rapidly
metabolizing sites (making red blood cells, etc). These are very
susceptible to the alpha radiation, so the Pu is incredibly toxic.
Is anyone able to tell me whether vaporized plutonium will descend
from the upper atmosphere to enter our bodies?
Rob Gross (GROSS%BCVAX3.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu)
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Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1986 15:37 EST
From: Rob Austein <SRA@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Sound political question from, would you belive, Boskone?
There was a session on SDI at Boskone (New England Science Fiction
Association's annual convention, for all you mundanes out there).
Among other panelists, there was one Ben Bova, who has been talking
about things like SDI for years and years (see his novel Millenium, in
particular). He made the following point, or at least this is what I
carried away after hearing him speak. I'd be interested to hear
comments about this (ie, flame invitation, but finish reading 1st...).
Leaving aside for the moment the issue of whether or not we can, now,
in 1986, begin building a Star Wars system (not the Space astrodome
but the space anti-ICBM platforms with some non-zero ability to injure
missiles), it is highly likely that we will be able to build something
along these lines sometime within the next hundred years. I don't
think anybody is claiming that such a system is impossible (the
strongest statement I take seriously is Parnas's assertion that the
software required is well beyond the current state of the art, but
that is not the same thing). Leave aside as well the issue of testing
such a system (the current ICBM setup upon which MAD depends is not
really testable either, but that didn't stop us from building it or
the USSR from fearing it). I believe that it is a fairly safe bet
that by 2086 some group will have such a system in place. Bova thinks
so. His point is that whoever has such a system in place will be the
superpower(s) of the next century. He feels the interesting question
is who that group will be: the US, the USSR, the UN (or successor
body), some combination of the above, etcetera ad nauseum.
Bova also appears to believe that the US will in fact share SDI
technology with the USSR (I'm not so sure about this; one member of
the audience piped up about sharing VAX-780s with the USSR but was
ignored). He has been pushing for a world government with teeth for a
long time, and he said that we are witnessing the first steps in that
direction (again, I'm not at all sure I belive this, just attempting
to represent the man's views).
Ok, -now- you can all start throwing the rotten tomatoes....
--Rob
(Opinions expressed herein are my fault if anybody's and may be
complete fabrications of a mind besotted by excessive quantities of
mead, popcorn, and pan-galactic gargle blasters...)
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Date: 0 0 00:00:00 CDT
From: "^_MARTIN J. MOORE" <mooremj at eglin-vax>
To: RISKS-LIST:, risks <risks at sri-csl>
Re: More Plutonium/Shuttle
The 2/17/86 issue of Aviation Week contains an article entitled "Officials
Disagree on Data Assessing Shuttle Reliability." The main topic of the
article is the danger of plutonium contamination from nuclear shuttle
payloads in case of an accident (I seem to have heard about this somewhere
before :-). I recommend the article to the RISKS readership. One quote from
Robert K. Weatherwax, author of a study titled "Review of Shuttle/Centaur
Failure Probability Estimates for Space Nuclear Mission Applications"
[December 1983] seems to answer the questions we were throwing around:
We concluded that many, if not most, solid rocket motor failures would
result in some release of plutonium, or at least a high likelihood of
that. We recommended more safety analyses be done to evaluate the
likelihood of booster failures in conjunction with this nuclear risk.
A nuclear payload cannot explode, but it can be broken up, vaporzied or
fragmented. You would have prompt fatalities on the ground and substantial
contamination in eastern Florida [if a catastrophic launch failure
occurred.] In a worst possible case, you could double the entire worldwide
burden of plutonium in the atmosphere.
Weatherwax is head of Sierra Energy and Risk Assessment, located in
Sacramento. Sierra was contracted by the Air Force to perform the study.
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Date: Wednesday, 19 February 1986 15:46-EST
From: djw%a at LANL.ARPA (Dave Wade)
To: ARMS-D-Request
Re: Plutonium
Newsgroups: ar.arms-d
Organization: Where God decreed skies should be purple and the beaches are 1000 miles long.
I am aware that somepeople have been doing a long range study on the effects
of inhaling Plutonium. I believe the study is completed through forty
years. You all should try and read that report if it wasn't classified,
I'm sure you will be relieved.
I will postulate that with 40 years to live; and a united world; we can
overcome any diseases produced by inhaling an alpha emitter.
Note; that even though I work around the experts, I am a programmer and I
don't know much physics or chemistry.
Dave Wade
--
I was in Albuquerque the other day and I watched one of those orange sunsets.
The sun reflected off the clouds and the clouds went through every color of
the rainbow... It took over an hour.
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Date: Wednesday, 19 February 1986 23:47-EST
From: jon at uw-june.arpa (Jon Jacky)
To: ARMS-D
Subject: Do U.S. ICBM's use the same kind of seals as the Shuttle SRB's?
The most popular theory for the Shuttle disaster seems to be that the O-rings
that sealed the solid rocket boosters (SRB's) failed, allowing a jet of hot
gas to escape and burn through the skin of the external fuel tank, igniting
the liquid fuel therein. Speculation has it that the freezing temperatures
at the Cape that morning may have made the rubber seals brittle and
ineffective.
I thought that the Shuttle SRB's were similar to the boosters for most of
the ICBM's in the U.S. strategic arsenal - the Minuteman, Poseidon, and soon,
MX and Trident. Is there potential for the same kind of failure? Is it
significant that ICBM's are usually tested at Vandenberg in southern
California, while many ICBM's are stored in silos in North Dakota and Wyoming,
where it is often much colder?
-Jonathan Jacky
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Date: Thu, 20 Feb 86 09:32:40 PST
From: prandt!mikes@AMES-NAS.ARPA (Peter O. Mikes)
re: Censorship
The issue came up when Lin made
a comment that this is 'uncensored' digest and was challenged to "print that".
The question of what are the forms of censorship and when they may be
justified is of interest here, both to understand the constraints of this
dialog and to understand the constraints on the global dialog.
Firstly, I would differentiate between the 'editorial policy' which may
deem certain items 'not fit to be printed' for the benefit of given
audience and between censorship. The difference is that both editor and
the editorial policy are public - and chosen by the audiences. Editorial
policies may become tool of censorship when the 'entry into the position
of editor' becomes restricted or controlled. In practical cases, censorship
is exercised not by editors but by outside authority. So - I understand Lin's
comment as saying that he is a lucky enough editor=moderator that all the
contributions he gets seems to fit. As a example of how a real censorship
would work we can consider following scenario: Let's say a (component of)
government would want to keep some topics (lets say entries critical of US
policy in Central America) 'off the screens'. It would then 'note those' who
do bring up such topics, and gradually eliminate their access to the nets.
In the case of nets such as ARPANET, it would find out that 'certain contracts'
can be made more lean .. ( Which reminds me, that our contract is being
renegotiated right now ).
Anyway, such scenario is unlikely to happen in US because of strong
First Amendment sentiments, but it's consideration may become relevant
as we start considering this an 'international' or 'global' forum.
The issues of 'who can have access' and 'when it is appropriate to
use handles' and 'who then can have access to handle-real-name lists' may
become important as the nets grow and spread. This is relevant to arms-d
as global teleconferencig was seriously proposed as means facilitating
evolution of the global consensus, for example in:
"The Computer Networks and Simulation III " edited by Shoemaker, to be
published by North-Holland in 1986.
I am interested in opinions on feasibility and efficacy of such global
conferencing. Please comment directly (and I will summarize) or via this digest. I think that even the countries which control their mass media may
tolerate some form of such dialog. The reason being, that it's that
part of public which --in US context would be the audience of the National
Enquirer and believe in Flying Saucers -- which is the main target and
mostly affected by the mass media control. The teleconferencing may be the
'middle road' between the dialog of 'ideological mouthpieces' (which I suspect
describes the discussions being carried on the diplomatic channels) which
seems to be ineffective and between the 'full and free access' which -
for various reasons - seems unfeasible at this time.
I wonder if you (this is a poll) would consider it proper, to
participate in global discussion on arms-race and proper methods of conflict
resolution, if local authorities would have 'some limited control' over the
access ....What - if any - control would be acceptable?
Peter Mikes-(personal opinions)-Informatics General Corporation.
reply to: Mikes@ames-nas
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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