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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)."

3 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. The Europeans have tried this before. by Kinetic+Kit · · Score: 0, Troll

    That is, build the biggest "something" then launch it during the early part of the year. It was called the Titanic. Here's hoping there are no icebergs on the way up.

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    Can what is formed say to that who formed it, "Why have you made me thus?"
  2. well, it's the Europeans... by AntonVoyl · · Score: 0, Troll
    ... so I guess the name "ENVYSAT" makes sense.

    Are Americans supposed to envy this "juggernaut" or is it the product of somebody covetingly looking at somebody else's manned space program?


    I kid because I love... the acronym for the American missile shield will probably be just a couple of letters away from spelling "arrogance". It's all very unfortunate...

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    sig semper tyrannis!
  3. SCIAMACHY by dackroyd · · Score: 1, Troll
    The Germans are particularly proud of SCIAMACHY on board Envisat: the SCanning and Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CartograpHY.

    Only the Germans would come up with an acronym of nine letters. And it looks liks they'll be the only people able to pronounce it ;)

    Ski-A-Marquis ?

    --
    "Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne