Tell your Dad “Thank You”!!
I remember the controversy over the launch of Cassini well; the far left was screaming about the risks if the plutonium power source reentered the atmosphere. It was always minimal at best, and it proved that some people will complain if you hang them with a new rope...
Frankly the science of Cassini has been worth whatever risk there may have been, and the pictures are just astounding!
People don’t widely know that Cassini was timed to get to Saturn at the time when the sun passed the plane of the orbit of the rings, which only happens every 75 years or so, and that has been one of the main reasons that Cassini has made so many startling discoveries.
Cassini is another amazing value for the money spent to design, build and launch that spacecraft, and our Country owes an enormous debt of gratitude to your Dad and everyone else at Lockheed Martin and NASA who continues to work this amazing spacecraft.
I asked my dad about the plutonium claims at that time. He said the way it was constructed, the bird would have to reenter the atmosphere at a perfect 90-degree angle to even scorch the outside of the container! I don’t recall the actual composition but it was like a couple inches of lead, then stainless steel, then ceramics, and on and on.
He’s a full engineer now, but in 1999 he was an electromechanical technician. Basically, he put all the pieces together on the frame of the satellite. IIRC, it took two years to build that one.
He has a wall full of flight patches, he’s worked on literally dozens of satellites, the first being the one that penetrated Venus’ atmosphere (sorry, can’t remember the name! Ugh!) He really loves it. And even now, though an engineer, you’re likely to find him crawling around a bird in the cleanroom rather than on the computer.
I’ll forward your thanks.