(See also: reports, videos and pictures from: Daily News report; Space on-line.
An expanded version of what follows is posted at: http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby/ref/kg980820.htm).

NASA claimed last year that the Titan 4 rocket used to loft the Cassini space probe was reliable. The explosion on launch of an identical Titan 4 rocket on August 12th (following the 1993 explosion in California of another Titan 4 rocket) demonstrates how lucky we were that the 72.3 pounds of plutonium oxide on Cassini stayed intact! There have now been two catastrophic accidents in the 25 Titan 4 launches. That's a one-in-12 severe accident rate. Reliable?

Space accidents cost lots of money. Some reports price the spy satellite blasted to smithereens on August 12 at $1.3 billion. The spy satellite destroyed in the 1993 Titan 4 launch explosion at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was valued at $800 million. And then there's the cost of Lockheed Martin's Titan 4 rockets.

But more important is the massive loss of life that will occur as mishaps inevitably continue in the space program if it is not de-nuclearized and de-weaponized. August 18, 1998 was exactly a year before the day when NASA intends to have Cassini conduct an extremely dangerous "flyby" of Earth. Unless NASA can be stopped, it plans to have the probe and its 72.3 pounds of plutonium use the Earth's gravity to increase the velocity of Cassini so it can reach its final destination of Saturn. Cassini is supposed to come flying in at 42,300 miles per hour just 496 miles overhead. If there is a rocket misfire or other malfunction and the probe makes an "inadverent reentry" into the atmosphere, it will break up and plutonium rain down. NASA admits that, should that happen, "five billion of the estimated 7 to 8 billion world population at the time," says the statement, "could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure." A "Safety Evaluation Report" for the Cassini mission says that a "flyby" accident would cause "several tens of thousands of latent cancer fatalities worldwide." Independent scientists say casualties could be much higher hundreds of thousands or millions dying.

A major effort is underway to get NASA to redirect the Cassini probe to the Sun rather than risk such a loss of life. But if NASA can't be stopped and the Cassini "flyby" works there is still much more nuclear danger ahead. NASA is currently studying eight future space missions between 2000 and 2015 that will likely use nuclear-fueled electric generators. These nuclear shots would be launched from Florida with the Titan 4 as a principle delivery vehicle.

Pressure from Lockheed Martin, which not only manufactures the Titan 4 but the plutonium systems, the nuclear-boosting U.S. Department of Energy and the national nuclear labs have much to do with why NASA insists on the life-threatening use of nuclear power on space devices. Then there is the military connection. The U.S. military wants to deploy spaceborne weaponry, especially lasers. A 1996 Air Force Report states: "In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of space-based weapons of devastating effectiveness." But these weapons need large amounts of power, and "_ a natural technology to enable high power is nuclear power in space."

Only modest amounts of electricity are produced by plutonium on space probes 745 watts on the Cassini mission to power instruments. This could be generated by safe, solar photovoltaic cells even far from the sun. Indeed, the European Space Agency is readying its Rosetta space probe to fly past the orbit of Jupiter to rendezvous with a comet and using solar energy to generate 500 watts instead of plutonium.

NASA, after seeing its budget drop with the end of the Apollo missions to the moon, got ever tighter with the Pentagon. The Pentagon would like to deploy weaponry powered by nuclear systems in space and so NASA, seeking to stay in step with the military, insists on nuclear power on in space even if it kills us.

What can you do? Email Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space and join the challenge to end this madness. Log onto the Stop Cassini Earth Flyby web site. You'll find petitions at the site and recommendations of where you can direct your protests.

The space program involves risks. Accidents will happen. But by including nuclear power and moving to space weaponry, the risks are greatly expanded to include the lives of people all over the world.

Further comment:
Not only does the explosion of the Titan 4A represent an excellent case against Cassini but the cargo was an Advanced Vortex satellite managed by the National Reconnaissance Office on behalf of the National Security Agency for order-of-battle analysis, and interception of civilian communications. The new Menwith Hill radomes are being built to support Vortex and Orion satellites. The satellites violate civil liberties and also help to implement the United States Space Command's Long Range Plan for 2020, which explicitly calls for U.S. domination of the planet, in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.
Loring Wirbel

STOP PRESS ... On 28th August 1998, a second rocket (a Delta 3) exploded in the skies above Cape Canaveral.
You can check out the story from the NoFlyby "What's New" page or from the Infoseek News channel

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