henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (01/17/90)
In article <10294@microsoft.UUCP> davidle@microsoft.UUCP (David LEVINE) writes: >Remember that the entire time, the astronauts will be exposed to the >radiation from the RTG's -- a fair amount. In order to stow or >detatch the RTG booms, they would have to get close to the RTG's >themselves. The RTGs don't radiate very much; the whole point of using Pu238 is that it's an alpha emitter with very little gamma output. The RTGs are *hot*, mind you, and that would create problems. I agree with the rest of the commentary; Galileo was not designed to be retrieved and it would be very difficult. There is also the question of whether it would ever fly again. Money for that might be hard to find. I was at the Cape to see 41C, LDEF deployment and Solar Max repair, go up. One of the options for Solar Max repair, if problems occurred, was to bring the thing back down for attention on the ground. Except that one of the senior Solar Max scientists told us that there was no money to do anything with it once it got down... -- 1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 1990: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
jdnicoll@watyew.waterloo.edu (Brian or James) (01/18/90)
The designers of Galileo had a strong motive to use RTG designs that don't leak large amounts of hard radiation: Galileo's electronic systems. It wouldn't make sense to use a power source that toasted the system it was powering, and electronics can be pretty unforgiving of doses of short wavelength EMR and charged particles. (I had a co-op Electrical Engineering student comment to me about the poor performance of circuit boards exposed to 5000 Rads, although he -wouldn't- what working environment his test boards were intended to be used in.) James Nicoll