Dr. VanDam did not mention, and being only politicians unable to see beyond the next vote or appointment they did not ask:
True, we do have a theory of how to start and continue the slow burn nuclear conversion of ordinary rock and dirt to energy. What we do not have, as yet, is a way to stop it.
We think that eventually future man will probably find a way to stop the process. We think slow burn will not speed up and run out of control to consume an entire planet before we have found a way to stop it. We think that future science may even find a way to decontaminate the planet. We hope these things.
But we know that the science of nucleonics will be stillborn and stunted to grow no farther unless we go on testing. We convince ourselves that even if an entire planet is consumed, it is a worthless planet anyway, and will be worth it.
Yet there was the usual small minority who questioned our right to destroy one of the planets of the solar system. There is always such a minority, and as always, the rest of the world, intent on turning what it intended to do anyway into the Right-Thing-To-Do, was able to shout them down.
Anyway, the consequences were for future man to face. Or so we thought.
I say we, because I was one of the members of Project Slow-Burn. Not that I'm the hero. There wasn't any hero. Mistaken or not, it was conceived this wasn't one of those television spectaculars cooked up to convert science into public emotionalism. There was no country-wide search for special photogenic hero-types to front the project.
The reporters, true to their writing tradition of trying to reduce even the most profound scientific achievement to the lowest common denominator of sloppy sentimentalism or avid sensationalism, tried to heroize Dr. VanDam as head of the science side of the project. But he wasn't having any.
"Don't you think, gentlemen," he answered them with acid scorn, "It is about time the public grew up enough to support the search for knowledge because we need it, rather than because they'd like to go to bed with some handsome, brainless kook you've built up into a hero?"
This response was not likely to further the cause of journalism.