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Comment by drzaiusapelord | Hacker News Reader

This is such a non-issue (from the article):

“The project is planning to produce new Pu-238 at a rate that supports currently projected NASA missions,” says Rebecca Onuschak, program director for the DOE’s plutonium infrastructure. “There is no shortfall of material projected to meeting those needs, and so no remedy or action plan has been implemented.”

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The argument that if NASA had more RTG's laying around it would be doing more is a bit suspicious as that's not how space missions are planned. Not to mention, Charles Bolden just wrote a letter to Congress asking them why they can't fund the SLS properly. There's no extra money laying around.

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I think you've got it wrong; Bolden is mad at Congress for funding SLS at the expense of Commercial Crew, which includes SpaceX and Boeing's new CST-100 vehicle: http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/06/11/commercial-crew-spacesh...

SLS is a white elephant that currently has nothing to do. The first crewed mission is scheduled for 2021, and plans beyond that are hazy. NASA managers have looked into "how seldom" they can launch the thing while still maintaining a safe and viable program.

And the article describes a chilling effect which keeps plutonium-dependent missions from being seen as viable, so of course there will be enough plutonium for all the planned missions (of which there are precious few).

Bolden very clearly stated that he's upset that there's money for all these Russian ISS launches, but not for his SLS and the CCV programs. There is no bigger cheerleader for CCV than Bolden. This SLS vs CCV "controversy" is 100% manufactured.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/28/9221541/NASA-Charles-Bolde...

It costs around $81 million to send just one astronaut on the Soyuz. Bolden says it will only cost $58 million per seat to send astronauts on the Commercial Crew vehicles. "It’s as if we keep ordering expensive takeout because we haven’t yet set up our own kitchen — only, in this case, the takeout meals are costing us hundreds of millions of dollars," he writes.

Congress keeps insisting that NASA spend more on the SLS than it wants to, and less on the CCV. Even if we were to fully fund CCV this year it wouldn't be until 2018 or so that we could stop hitching rides with the Russians so I don't think it's fair to say that the CCV and Russian ISS launches are in conflict right now.

It is about 70% through 2015.

And in the next paragraph the article explains why:

“There are tons of things NASA could use the new plutonium for, but there’s nothing on the books,” says Casey Dreier, director of advocacy at the Planetary Society. “Why is that? Because NASA isn’t sure when or if it will have the plutonium it needs!”

I don't think the argument is that NASA would be doing more if it had more RTGs, but rather that without more RTGs there will be new limits on the types of things it can do (no large rovers like MSL or outer solar system missions like Voyager/Cassini/New Horizons).

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