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Triana Mothballed
jessemckinney writes "Apparently, the US congress of last year cut the funding of this great satellite project after it was finished. It will now take millions of dollars (us) to refuel and recalibrate the instruments. Why do politicians have to kill great science projects for their own political vandettas?"
Now congress figures "If we can understand it, it must be stupid"
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
It's worth the money just to have a window to click on next time you want to say "Cambot, get me rocket number 9."
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
Item 1:
In March 2000, a National Academy committee reported that Triana had "the potential to make unique scientific contributions," even though the mission had "higher than usual risks."
What are the risks they are talking about?
Item 2:
Craig Tooley, the deputy project manager, said that when Triana was first proposed, there were enough flights and cargo space for it to fit into the space shuttle schedule.
But now, the shuttle is limited to six flights a year and is heavily loaded with higher priority missions.
The International Space Station has higher priority. This is no surprise.
This quote confuses me:
instruments on Triana would have a unique perspective for studying the Earth's atmosphere, climate and seasonal changes.
I thought there were some weather satellites. What functionality does this satellite possess over the others?
Visit their website. Check out their photo collections in the making as well.
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Error 500: Internal sig error
Second, the SSC would have cost a lot more than $2billion to complete in the first place. Try closer to $8billion, plus the running costs.
Third CERN have already started building the LHC which does the same science at a fraction of the cost and will certainly be completed first. The SSC had nothing to do with science, it was putting the US flag on the thing that was the whole point of the exercise
Fourth, the site chosen was a dump, a redneck dry county where the most intelligent natives are the numerous fireants.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
"I have made the tough moral and ethical decision that the federal government can only fund direct and untainted descendants from the original Apollo spacecraft. Al(l) Gore's base belong to us."
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Why don't they just stick it out there one of these days when they are going to the ISS? Combine missions, save money, do a bit more...
Do you think all of the Soviet Union's nukes were scrapped when that country collapsed? China has been expanding its military and has recently allied itself with Russia in order to counteract the US. All its bitching about how the proposed missle shield would violate the ABM treay, Russia certainly doesn't have a problem with their extensive network of SAMs. Sure, they might not be good enough to knock down a missle as designed, but they could at least _try_ and get lucky. That's a big lead over what the US has, which is nothing.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
To take pictures of the Earth.
...*sniff*
*sniff* that's so.... Oprah
Al Gore could have downloaded openuniverse and saved us alot of money.
Who says they did? My understanding of the article is that no funding was actually cut from the Triana project itself -- the satelite is done. In fact,
Moan all you want about NASA being underfunded, but this doesn't sound at all like a matter of anyone taking "political revenge" at Al Gore's project. NASA has to prioritize, and they have.
Personally, I question why the space station (a run-down tenement in orbit! whoo hoo!) is more important than this climate-research vessel. But I don't smell a political attack here.
Triana was originally built as a political favor. I won't mention to whom, but you might guess by the nickname it was given of "Goresat".
There was originally no science planned. Only when scrutiny increased to it were some basic instruments added to make the excuse of it being a research tool float.
Just a heads up, the only thing Triana would have really done was take pictures of the earth for posting on a website to 'make people feel better about the earth'. For a working alternative, please visit the NOAA website where legions of weather satellites already do this 24x7.
Triana was a waste of a rocket launch. Hopefully the chassis can be adapted to perform some real science.
First he invented the Internet, now this! :)
Just raise the taxes on crack.
So did Slashdot. Yesterday.
Frankly, If we want to see the earth from space 'cuz it looks k00l, we should do it ourselves
Amateur Satellite geeks rule. And can do it a hell of a lot cheaper than Triana.
Heh...not even close. And unlike most technology, don't expect this price to go down over the years...
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Do you really think NASA is outside the scope of politics?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If the "Vandellas" find out you called them "Vandettas" (sounds like a Volkswagen), you're liable to find yourself with "Nowhere to Run", and worried about something worse than the current "Heatwave", perhaps finding yourself sinking in "Quicksand".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Maybe we can get the Europeans to launch Triana.
Maybe that's what Gore is doing in Europe besides growing a beard: trying to talk the EU into sending his pet sat into orbit.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
YOur point is true, but this particular item is a 'screw everything ever associated with Gore' from the republicans. The housing cost will cost more(eventually) then sending it up.
Not to mention how little of a percentage the nasa budget is, but it still gets cut
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
According to someone I know on the project, they might have a launch opportunity for Triana if they send the shuttle up to recover UARS.
In the meantime, NASA will be spending about a million dollars a year to store Triana. The craft's solid rocket propellant, which chemically degrades, expires in 2003 and will have to be replaced, at the cost of about $3 million, before Triana can fly. It would also take $5 to $10 million to recalibrate the instruments after the craft comes out of mothballs.
So, we're talking about $13 million bucks here. What's it cost to launch the shuttle? Seems like it would make more sense to just use the $13 mil to get that bad boy up into space right now instead of wasting it all...
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
As such it would cost a very small amount to develop software to integrate those pictures to generate an image of what the planet would look like from any point,
That's been done many years ago. I did something similar as an intern in 89 to make a video of the Earth rotating using satellite images.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
On tenews th otherday I spotted a normal rocket taking off (titan? arianne? - The sound wasoff). Why cant his be launched on one of these?
s pace-ariane-dc)
Hmm... Was is this recent launch? (http://news.excite.com/news/r/010807/09/science-
Might not be your best bet for getting a something safely into orbit. =)
If the government has more money than it can spend at the moment, why did they need that huge loan to cover the checks?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I heard on the radio this morning (KCBS) that there was a proposal under consideration in the House to mothball two carrier fleets(!) to divert money to Missle Defense. The Joint Chiefs were not amused. I wouldn't be, either. That's the House for you.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is a feel good enviroweenie type of project. It's a frigging NASA-built webcam! We need to spend our money on more important projects, like sending Lego robots to Mars, and huge expensive lasers in orbit. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Spend the NASA budget where it's use will better serve the advancement of science and knowledge. Raise the budget for the ISS. More Mars exploration missions. Christ, let's send a mission to the Moon to verify the existence of subsurface ice.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Depends on how much more it'll take to launch the damn thing. I agree, it's not the world's most useful satellite, but it's here. If we put it into storage it'll take $13M to make it usable again. If it takes less than, say, $30M to launch it, then we're talking about another 15% to actually get some use out of the thing.
Dyolf Knip
Why do dogs lick their own balls?
A: Because they can.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
"Vandettas" aside, (they sang back-up for Martha, right?), this project doesn't inspire a huge amount of confidence in me. It started out as a stunt by Al Gore, and while scientists may have come up with useful uses for it (which I'm not qualified to judge), I'd be a lot more enthusiastic about a project that was designed to do something useful in the first place.
My sense this is like the biology experiments they do on the space shuttle, something I am qualified to judge. They're worth doing, given that the shuttle is already going but they're hardly a justification for the shuttle program.
As an aside, which may make you feel better, I heard a talk recently by one of the leaders of the Chandra telescope project. Asked about the security of funding, he said that while legislators aren't going to give more money, they pretty much all appreciate astronomy and space and the stream of money isn't in jeopardy at all.
We already saw this, btw.
As for the project, there was clearly nothing vaguely scientific in the original plan but it was subsequently expanded to include a whole host of "scientific" things to encourage its approval. Of course, with the increase in things it needed to accomplish, the price went up. It's hardly surprising that a pet project like this got cut.
Dancin Santa
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Most politicians aren't thinking of the greater good first. Number one.
Then, the rest of your taxdollars are spent covering it up.
It was another crap science project that was a waste of money. For its extra cost, it did not accomplish much that could not be done in other ways that were cheaper and already exist.
This project was being done for the "gee whizz, neato" factor. Not sound science. I am glad to see it mothballed. Give me a project like Genesis anyday over pieces of crap like Triana.
I figured it might have been done. Of course, I'm presumign it's done with real time weather, and mapping to simulate the fact you are viewing some parts of the iamge through more atmosphere (with weather) and at a different angle? Work, but surely it can be done. If you have't seen some region for a while (particularly the regions near the terminator where the light is changing rapidly) you could extrapolate from earlier images.
Like I said it should be possible to get one that really shows you what the earth looks like from L1, which is the point, not to actually have a $120M plus launch camera there.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Well, I tried. I stopped cold at this sentence: one of President Bush's top priorities in his election campaign and one that enjoys widespread public support from clear-thinking Americans.
A badly disguised ad-hominem attack, only two paragraphs in! I didn't bother with the rest of it.
Bush has other options. Where this missile defense shit always heads is to the fantasy-land of False Alternative.
In the real world there are usually more than two options, and they usually do not stand in direct opposition to each other. But with the Missile Defense Salesmen, there are only two ways. Missile Defense, or Horrible Death! Panic!
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Putin has said that he would rather not have the damn things because his poor ass country has to maintain them. But as long as Bush and Cheney keeping fingering their Doctor Strangelove Decoder rings and wringing hands over Russia, which can't keep the friggin' lights on (I been there, I know) and China, is not escalating their military preparedness in any great degree (they are not building huge stockpiles of nuke; Shit, they don't even have a credible sub force or, golly, an aircraft carrier). Do you blame China for teaming up with Russia? If the US weren't rattling the saber all the damn time, for no reason, then they might just get down to business rather than making alliances against us. Most Americans would be shocked to find out that many of our close allies consider us a bigger threat to world peace because of the rampant militarism in America (See the History Channel's never ending homage to guns, tanks and bombs) and incompetent (Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield), dicredited (Condeleeza Rice) and evil (Kissinger, who has reared his war criminal head lately) leadership. We're going to hell in a handbasket, walking down a road paved with Republicans.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
More to the point, and the main reason I think the Missile Defense Shield is pure Wile E. Coyote, is: What happens when the incoming missile's radioactive waste splatters the city below it? What about the EMP that will knock out all communications equipment on the ground at about the same time? Yeah, they can hit a missile or two. The side-effects will be almost as disastrous as if they'd just let the damn things hit the ground.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Al gore said "Hey, dude! No seriously. I want to put a sate... hahahaha. Pass that to me fucker. Ok what were we talking about? Oh yeah, so anyway, this satellite will take pictures of the earth! Isn't that fan-fucking-tastic? HAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh man I am so messed up."
Some of the other uses sound like they may be of some scientific use but a few years until budget has availability for it isn't really a big deal. Sorry we can't launch everyone's ideas into space. How about just pay the russians to launch it. They will suck your dick for a price.
But we all share some responsibility here. We've let national politics become dominated by sound-byte politicians, each with a political agenda that's a mindless list of hot button issues. Look at the web page of Dick Armey, the politico quoted in the CNN piece. His politics are hodpodge of simple-minded reactions. ("Beware of the red-light camera scam!") This is the House Majority Leader, one of the most powerful positions in DC!
Here's an interesting political experiment: call Mister Armey (phone number on his web site) and give him a piece of your mind. Or write your own congressperson.
Building a $120M satellite just to get a constantly updating view of the earth? Couldn't they save a ton by buying one of those very detailed 3D models of the Earth they use in sci-fi flicks and hooking it up to a giant renderfarm? They'd just need make sure they chose a model that doesn't leave out New Zealand.
Sure, it wouldn't be "the real thing," but I say, no harm, no foul. The populace would be happy because they could tune into "The Planet Channel" any time, and be filled with that warm fuzzy "I am a speck of dust" feeling. The Democrats and Republicans would be happy because they could spend their half of the 120 mil on whatever they wanted (the former on supplying clean needles to welfare mothers, the latter on black ops research to create a clone army of genetically-enhanced Richard Nixons.)
And nobody would be any the wiser.
I don't know the value of the other projects they put on this bird, but Gore's picture from space was sentimental but stupid.
I stll think we should do it, but we should never have spent $120M on the satellite and more on the now scrubbed launch.
We already have cameras taking pictures of the earth all the time. The weather sats and other instruments are constantly recording the earth.
As such it would cost a very small amount to develop software to integrate those pictures to generate an image of what the planet would look like from any point, including L1. With enough work you could get it so you could not tell the difference.
Yes, it wouldn't be "real" to some people. But it would be true, and that's real enough for me.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I wonder if the above (with which I can't say that I particularly agree, but that's irrelevant) was moderated as a troll just because the moderator didn't agree with the opinion expressed and/or didn't like the way in which it was expressed.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Here's a copy of the article text, for those who do not wish to see pop-up-ad-hell. :)
Now I'm just going to free-loader-and-revenue-thief-hell.
Thanks for nothing.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Why do politicians have to kill great science projects for their own political vandettas?
:)
Sometimes a question just answers itself.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
...because those pesky scientists would most likely use it to gather evidence about inconvenient issues like global warming and pollution. In the mean time, the money is much better spent on that trillion dollar orbiting erector set.
It would require an eight-inch telescope on the satellite, which would be 1.6 million Km from Earth, rather than the 36 thousand Km of geostationary weather satellites. Those existing weather satellites already let us see global weather 24 hours a day.
(flamebait) And the fact is that they aren't going to get even that, because future taxes are going to go towards (a) covering the budget shortfall and debt interest generated by this year's $300-a-person political bribe, and (b) that amazing missile defense plan that will cost several hundred billion to do nothing but force the Chinese to build several dozen extra ICBMs, and the North Koreans to step up research for their back-of-an-unmarked-truck payload delivery system. (/flamebait)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.