Politics Kills Spacecraft Launch

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."

Comments

Why home launch?

[maddogsparky]

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.

From what I understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Some background

[gravelpup]

...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.