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Politics Kills Spacecraft Launch

Posted by michael on from the business-as-usual dept.

Electrawn writes: "Partisan politics became involved in an effort to kill the Triana spacecraft. Triana's mission is to sit in Lagrange 1, a spot between the Sun and Earth and take pictures of Earth as a whole and monitor climate changes. Yahoo has this AP Story on what happened, and also, here is a MSNBC version via the Washington Post. It seems former Presidential candidate Al Gore had something to do with inspiring the space craft, which made it a target for the Republican Congress."

18 comments

  1. Re:How many birds can fit in Lagrange 1? by Myco · · Score: 2, Funny
    You could fit more if you use a Lagrange multiplier.

    >rimshot<

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  2. Re:How many birds can fit in Lagrange 1? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    rotfl! we need more math jokes like this.

  3. Re:How many birds can fit in Lagrange 1? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ah. Halo orbit. That makes sense. I even check up on SOHO quite a bit. Should have know that. :)

  4. More background by SEWilco · · Score: 2, Informative
    This Spaceviews article was a thorough description at the time the idea was proposed. The idea came to Gore at night, while he was not fully conscious.

    I thought Slashdot had discussed this satellite, and the major points were that it would need an 8-inch telescope due to the distance, and existing weather satellites already give a better 24-hour view of weather patterns. Triana would have to be 1.6 million kilometers from Earth, rather than the 36,000 kilometers of a weather satellite's Clarke orbit. A 24-hour sunlit view could be created from the existing satellite images, as was mentioned in the link in the parent article.

  5. Re:And while we're at it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Well let's see. How many watts would one need to make a naked eye visible reflection from earth. Maybe a hundred thousand watts or more, to account for spreading of the beam, and atmosphere interference. Hell maybe a million watts would be more appropriate, since the eye isn't all that sensitive to that wavelength. Laser pointers are limited to 5 milliwatts I believe. Soooo....

    20,000,000 pointers to get 100,000 watts

    200,000,000 for 1,000,000 watts

    But maybe laser pointers are only .5 milliwatts.

    It's just a silly idea. And once the thing is done all the pointers will fall into the hands of children who will stare into them and torture their pets with them.

  6. And while we're at it... by Paintthemoon · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...let's get rid of those pesky satilites that keep track of global warming. Obviously, another Democratic plot to undermine the efforts of the good people in our energy sector to make sure Americans can continue to scarf all the fossil fuels they want.

    *sigh*

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    1. Re:And while we're at it... by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Dude, your website was one the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Put a spot on the moon, visible from Earth, using nothing but laser pointers from the Sharper Image? Hohohohehehehahaha...I guess artists don't let little things like feasibility get in their way. But, like you said, "I'm a writer and an artist, not a scientist." Who needs scientists...they'll just think of a way to make a nuclear weapon out of this project anyway. "But I think it could work, in theory." Yeah, go ahead and formulate a theory with no study, you're an artist and don't have anything to do with boring things like learning. BTW, you may be interested to know that your hero, Christo, has caused death with his careless designs. Of course, the artsy crowd brushes this away with glib phrases like "death is part of life", "this just reminds us that no art is safe", and "the people who died were just rednecks anyway".

      As an experiment, (I know, you won't want to do an experiment, you're a writer and an artist, not a scientist) get a friend to stand a few miles away, stand next to a building, and have your friend (who will have to be a scientist too, might be hard for you to find one, since you're a writer and an artist, not a scientist) shine a laser pointer on the building. Wow, the atmosphere really diffused that laser pointer, huh. I bet the Taiwanese manufacturer of that laser pointer didn't focus his laser very well, either. But hey, it would work in theory.

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    2. Re:And while we're at it... by NearlyHeadless · · Score: 2
      Actually, as noted by others here, this satellite was a political project, not one that was thought up by scientists, so it's a good thing that it was killed.

      There are already satellites used to measure global warming. There may be other kinds of sensors you'd want, but this orbit is hardly ideal.

      By the way, the satellites show there has been essentially no warming in the upper atmosphere, a fact which none of the computer climate models can explain.

    3. Re:And while we're at it... by Tackhead · · Score: 2
      > Actually, as noted by others here, this satellite was a political project, not one that was thought up by scientists, so it's a good thing that it was killed.

      Amen.

      If we want to see the earth from space 'cuz it looks k00l, we should do it ourselves.

      Amateur Satellite geeks rule.

  7. blah by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1, Troll
    Democrats good, Republicans bad. Why am I not surprised.

    I don't think this spacecraft is such a loss to humanity.

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  8. Why home launch? by maddogsparky · · Score: 2, Insightful
    If the Russians are truly our partners, they wouldn't mind launching a satellite for us. (begin_sarcasm) Besides, NASA would love to have other countries launch their spacecraft (end_sarcasm). Seriously, NASA could save a bunch of money by farming out launches to Russia if it could get over its ego and the egos of all the politicians who would try to block it.

    --
    science is a religion
  9. How many birds can fit in Lagrange 1? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A first approximation tells me only one. Unless there is some sort of "flat spot".

    1. Re:How many birds can fit in Lagrange 1? by mmontour · · Score: 2

      There's already at least one spacecraft stationed at L1 - SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory).

      There's a page here showing its orbit. It doesn't sit right at the L1 point, but rather moves in a "halo orbit" around L1.

  10. CompuTech scraps HAL by Starquake · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In other news today, the HAL project was scrapped due to a lack of profit margins. Low projections on investment returns led CompuTech Industries to kill the project in a 5-0 vote. Quote one boardmember, "Why throw away money on a system that's going to fail and try to kill people?"

    Seriously, politics and profit margins will continue to kill scientific research, which is why the real 2001 doesn't look much like 2001.

  11. From what I understand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This whole idea was pretty trippy. Apparently, we'd have a television channel showing a picture of the Earth 24 hours a day. It was to make us realize that we are one people on a tiny blue dot... or something.

    It's really not surprising that this idea was scrapped.

  12. The way that I read this... by AsbestosRush · · Score: 1

    is that the funding was cut while the craft was being *built*, then was re-granted. The problem *now* is that there's not enough resources to do another launch in the current flight schedule, with everything for the ISS and such.
    This decision came from NASA and it's schedule, not Congress.

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  13. Some background by gravelpup · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ...is available at this page on NASA Watch. Cowing's take (and he leans Democrat, IIRC) is that: 1) Triana began as a pet project and was kept alive as such, 2) the science was added later to further justify it, and 3) in the process of adding useful science, the cost blew up. Here are some interesting quotes that may help cut through the spin:
    ...the original low cost (one of its purported selling points) has ballooned to the point that criteria used to justify the cancellation of other missions should be invoked - yet won't be for fear of offending the Vice President.

    ...it is refreshing to have someone in a high government position (such as the vice president) who stays up late at night thinking about these things - and (apparently) has the technical ability to understand the concepts involved. If only Mr. Gore had translated this interest into practice and NOT supported a cut in NASA's budget 7 out of 8 years in a row.

    FWIW, I think it's a pretty cool idea. It is supposed to stream back a continuous feed of the Earth's sunlit side to be accessed via the Web. If nothing else, it would be a neat screensaver. :)
    I just don't think the fact that it's being mothballed can justifiably be used as a political football against the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (tm). Better projects get stuffed at NASA hourly.

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    Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

  14. L1 point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since Genesis is also travelling to L1, maybe Triana was canned to avoid a nasty mid-solar-system collision? :-)