Gregory's Server@michael_w_busch @graydon @cstross beats releasing carbon into the atmosphere
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4 comments
 @michael_w_busch @Junco @cstross The space-rated ones wound up with a "direct lunar return velocity into a steel mill" spec. Which didn't happen (though it would have been an interesting report from the night shift about the hole in the roof...) but Apollo 13 did, and as I recall they fished those out of the Pacific and flew them again. Which does seem like "sufficiently sturdy" was achieved.  @graydon @Junco @cstross Apollo 13's RTG was never recovered - it was deliberately dropped in 10 km of water. The RTG from the Nimbus B launch failure in 1968 was recovered from a few hundred meters down - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimbus_B . The redesign was after the Transit 5BN-3 launch failure in 1964, where the older RTG disintegrated on re-entry. @michael_w_busch @Junco @cstross Thank you! I do find it kinda silly to be paralytically worried about 4 kilos of Pu in the atmosphere given the amount scattered about by weapons testing. |
@Junco @graydon @cstross Plutonium RTGs do not have that particular problem, since they emit alphas rather than betas.
But engineers only figured out how to make them sufficiently sturdy after a kilo of plutonium got scattered across the landscape.