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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."

2 of 18 comments (clear)

  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.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  2. 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.