Defense Environment Alert -- The Defense Department is rejecting for now calls by environmentalists to consider alternatives to using the controversial fuel oxidizer perchlorate in the Ballistic Missile Defense System. One environmentalist says the move indicates that the military plans to rely on launch technologies that emit the rocket fuel additive into the upper atmosphere, resulting in erosion of the ozone layer. DOD says impacts from the rocket launches to the ozone layer would be insignificant, but it says in...
