Al VII. SUMMARY STATEMENTS OF INTEREST BY REPRESENTED AGENCIES Round robin discussion: J. D. Shreve, moderator Dr. Shreve: I put four things on the board here that might serve as a guide in making comments on your agency interest. Is an upper-atmosphere sampler an attractive and appropriate research tool? If so, give specifics and also additional measurements needed. Then, time of need and schedule, and, finally, has the meeting been adequate for your interest? You can go beyond this, but it is a list of some check points that might be worthwhile covering. Col. Barnes: Iam speaking strictly for both SNAPS. I feel definitely that we have to have upper air sampling if we are going to provide the nation with data as to hazards or probable hazards of SNAP devices. I guess this is the first time that we have seriously considered what might occur as a result of putting fission products in the atmosphere at high levels. products coming back, In connection with weapon testing, we discovered after the fact that we had fission This time we are going to test (SNAP reactors), we hope, before we put any large quan- tity of fission products in the atmosphere. As I mentioned the other day, we are planning to put radioactive material, as in the case of isotope power packages, into orbit around the earth, of re-entering these things in a specific location. between 300, 000 and 100,000 feet. At the moment we have no way They will re-enter at random and will burn up probably Upper air sampling as has been defined here is going to be vital tous. the present time we can only say that we think this material is going to burn up. analysis of the re-entry of missiles, nose-cone data, and things of this nature. our specific devices, our specific materials, is unknown, At We say that on the basis of our Precisely what will happen on I think that the time schedule which I mentioned yes- terday is most important, namely, that this year we expect to fly at least one or two isotope power packages containing plutonium 238. orbit which we achieve. time, When they will re-enter is completely unknown because this will be a function of the We do expect them to last five years if we are successful, preferably an even longer Plutonium 238 is rare in the atmosphere, and maybe you people will want to look for it as you sample the atmosphere to give us the background so that when our materials do come back you will be able to see if there is an increase in plutonium 238. and certain other missiles. In our studies we are interested in riding piggy-back on Atlas missiles This technique has not been discussed at the meeting here in any detail, and I can't discuss it in detail because I am not that familiar with it. The only thing I do know is that we have pods of 100-pound and 500-pound capacity which will ride on Atlas missiles. be put in these pods. Instrumentation of various kinds can This might be a fine way of sampling some upper atmosphere. Priority on these pods is quite high, but occasionally, if one has a piece of equipment ready and there is space, you can get the space available. In that ballistic trajectory, burnup will occur during a lateral distance of about 50 miles and a ver- tical distance of between 300, 000 and 100, 000 feet. We know precisely how much material we will have injected; we have a fair estimate of what is going to come in at the end. If we could sample the material between 173