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Monster European Environmental Satellite

Posted by michael on from the ozone-hole-what-ozone-hole dept.

andygood writes: "Spaceflight Now has this article about the 'Mother of All Earth Observation Satellites' which will be launched by Europe in early 2002. This thing is the size of a juggernaut and 'every hour will gather as much data as can be stored on a dozen PC hard disks'. 'ENVISAT' (ENVIronmental SATellite) has been in the works for almost fourteen years with a price tag of 2.3 billion (Euro)."

4 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. at first glance... by thelaw · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    when i first saw the picture, i thought it was a giant football field with goalposts and everything... good thing they have sense.

    now, what i want to know is, if it's SO good at monitoring ice flows and mud slides, can it monitor THE BLOB?!?!?!?!?

    -j

    --
    -- http://www.cerastes.org
  2. Any bets? by El_Nofx · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I give it a 1 in 4 chance of either flying right into a mountain on take off, the rocket not taking off at all or it not reaching the correct orbit. Not to be a pessamist but it seems like every other launch lately does one something wrong.

    --
    It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people. - clinko
  3. Re:Size of a Juggernaut by grammar+nazi · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    I don't remember the Behemoth from Magic the Gathering. Was it less powerful than the Leviation (10/10 Trample), but more powerful than the Juggernaut (5/3 First Attack)?

    Please clue me in!

    This Juggernaut will be unstoppable since it will orbit above the atmosphere, thus avoiding lightning bolts and their 3 points of damage.

    --

    Keeping /. free of grammatical errors for ~5 years.
  4. Re:Umm, okay. by iso · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I've noticed that responses like this one have become very popular on slashdot recently. I can't think of a single word or soundbite to describe it, but it's something along the lines of "I have absolutely no knowledge of the subject at hand yet I feel qualified enough to state that it is of no value to anyone."

    We simply must come up with a catchy phrase to describe this kind of response. "Ignoramus" and "slashbot" are both too vague, and while "Troll" is probably the closest term, it doesn't capture the nuances of this common response. Any takers?

    - j