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U.S. In Danger of Losing Earth-Observing Satellite Capability
New submitter crazyjj writes "As reported in Wired, a recent National Research Council report indicates a growing concern for NASA, the NOAA, and USGS. While there are currently 22 Earth-observing satellites in orbit, this number is expected to drop to as low as six by the year 2020. The U.S. relies on this network of satellites for weather forecasting, climate change data, and important geologic and oceanographic information. As with most things space and NASA these days, the root cause is funding cuts. The program to maintain this network was funded at $2 billion as recently as 2002, but has since been scaled back to a current funding level of $1.3 billion, with only two replacement satellites having definite launch dates."
of Short-Sightedness.
The anti-science crowd will soon be racking up an impressive body count - including their own voting-against-their-own-interest constituencies in hurricane and tornado country.
Public and Scientific earth viewing satellites are dwindling. The military has plenty of money to launch all they need.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
We'll just outsource it all to India and China.
This is a simple problem to solve. All they have to do is label the satellites as "anti-terrorist", or something like that, and they'll get all the funding they need.
Proverbs 21:19
It is worse than that. There is a group of people in the US Congress who just hate anything that the "other side" supports. It does not matter what it is they will work against anything that they think the other side wants to support. They care more about the success of their party than they do the country they swore to serve. The sad thing is that it has gone on long enough that two such groups have formed. We just have a bunch of obstinate dick heads now due to gerrymandering and an absent media.
This is the perfect tin-foil-hat scenario!
The "Global Warming Alarmists" will say it's a plot to prevent the study of of anthropogenic climate change by the "Deniers" and prove just how bad it is.
And the "Deniers" will say it's a plot to keep the "Alarmists" evil lie from coming to light.
Pass the popcorn!
I think it is the Left that is big on NASA cuts, as NASA is under mostly military spending. The problem is a failure to educate the public about the importance of these areas, If you leave it to average voter they will see NASA as a waste of tax payer money, because the government does nothing to really explain the importance to the general public. It was easy during the Cold war where we can go In Your Face USSR... But now our greatest enemies cannot even get a missile to go a few hundred miles, it seems less of a priority. Why does big business have control much greater then the government... It is easy, they know how to market to the average Joe.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
1. Cut Taxes
2. ????
3. Jesus Comes
There is a group of people in the US Congress who just hate anything that the "other side" supports. It does not matter what it is they will work against anything that they think the other side wants to support.
There are 536 people in this 'group'.
After all, the money to pay for F-22s that have never flown a combat mission and cost a year's salary to fly for an hour was FAR more important than trivial things like weather forecasting.
But just you wait and see what gets cut to pay for the F-35s!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I wouldn't be surprised if 6 new sats designed and launched between now and then could actually do the job of the 18 mission the TFA mentions . TFA was long on hype and short on details.
A growing percentage of our GDP is going to Wall Street billionaires.
A growing percentage of our GDP is going to the super wealthy.
A growing percentage of our GDP is going to big bankers.
A growing percentage of our GDP is going to military contractors.
A growing percentage of our GDP is going to maintaining certain industries failed business models.
Either find a way to make everyone play by the same rules, or expect repercussions from the serfs.
"Perhaps the GOP-dominated Congress will soon suggest"...
Congress has been DNC dominated from what? 2008 until 2010? STRONGLY dominated? And the GOP had slight majorities before then... This report is from 2007 with just a recent update...
Your dig at the GOP just doesn't sound reasonable...
The right hates science and it's conclusions, and the problem with these satellites is that they promote science and the conclusions scientists reach.
The right doesn't mind science R&D (i.e. the fraction of research that private companies can get an immediate ROI on.) It's just the pesky fundamental research with no foreseeable application and no quarterly profit that gets them upset; but without the fundamental research, there are no more breakthroughs.
Sorry, just not true.
http://www.econdataus.com/outgdp04.html
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Funny, I've always seen it as the "fiscal conservatives" want us to quit "wasting" money in space so instead things have to be billed under the military to get anything done.
Find me a liberal who opposes NASA funding based off of it going to military purposes, cause I think you are full of shit.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
While I've heard a lot about how NASA is undergoing drastic spending cuts, I haven't found any hard numbers for it. In fact, a cursory look at wikipedia and NASA's own published budget shows the opposite; NASA's current budget is actually historically above average. It is certainly higher then it was for most of the 1990s and 1980s. In fact according to wikipedia the average budget of NASA has been 15 billion, and yet it sits at around 17 billion today, actually increasing from 15 billion to 17 billion in 2007 and maintaining that level of spending for the foreseeable future. This seems to be backed up by NASA's own numbers (http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/622643main_FY%2013%20Budget%20Presentation.pdf). So my question is, what are we really talking about here? What am I missing? They only way that NASA is getting less funding right now is if you take it as a percentage of Federal spending in general, but that's more a sign that Federal spending has ballooned the last ten years rather then NASA not being funded. Is there really a NASA budget crisis, and if so why are they having time operating despite ending the fairly expensive shuttle program and despite receiving more money then they have historically since the space race?
We don't need no fancy satellites -- I bet they were dreamed up by some liberal thinker at a UNIVERSITY.
Jesus and the Bible tell us everything we need to know about climate changes, and that's that the world is going to burn. Judgment Day is approaching and those who aren't saved are going to burn to death forever.
USA! USA! USA!
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
It's not your fathers GOP anymore. The Tea Party folks insisted on cuts, and they got them, including funding for tsunami warning systems and weather programs. This days before the Japan quake and tsunami, as I recall.
Shipping, airlines, agriculture, the military, all depend on accurate weather forecasting.
We'd have never made it to the moon if these guys had been around back then, and if they have their way, we'll soon be losing passenger planes, cargo ships, and wars.
There are 536 people in this 'group'.
Give or take a handful of independents who are likely fed up the apparent inability of either majority party congresscritters to not act like spoiled fucking children.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Much like the early voyages of discovery that put America on the map were a waste, right? Why waste money on exploration when there are petty tribal wars to be fought?
NASA's budget is a rounding error compared to the military's budget, and yet I would put "landing a man on the moon" far higher than "My Lai" on the list of things America can be proud of. If exploration of space is a waste, then count me and millions of others as an ardent supporter of that kind of waste.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
YOU aren't Boeing / Lockheed / Northrup-Grumman , et. al.
THEY need lots of money for this sort of thing. Government regulations, security, terrorism and all that.
YOU shut the fuck up. THEY will protect America!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That may be so, but very few Republicans these days are fiscal conservatives. Many more are only social conservatives, like Rick Santorum: ready and willing to tell other people how to live their lives.
Corporations, on the other hand, get free rein.
Yup. Now that companies have their own satellites it would make more sense to privatise weather stuff. NASA is there for the long term research that is too risky for the corporate sector. You know, Mars missions, Moon missions in '69, that kind of thing.
It's the decline of the holy roman empire 2.0
The US is rapidly becoming a has-been, and at this point it may be irreversible. The tea-party and other opportunists wanting bread and circus are just a symptom of the decline, not the cause.
Once people are more interested in preserving what they have and not risk wasting anything than taking a risk at investing in the future, then the decline has already started.
On an aggregate level, R&D has a much better ROI than war. The problem is that the profits from an investment in basic science are realized by society as a whole, instead of the individuals involved in doing or funding the research.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You're not really right about the independents in Congress: Joe Lieberman is probably the ultimate spoiled child. He lost in the Connecticut Democratic primary back in 2006, went whining to the national Democratic leadership, and convinced them to back him rather than the guy who was ostensibly their party's candidate.
The other independent is Bernie Sanders. Like him or not, he definitely sticks to his socialist positions. He's willing to make deals with strange bedfellows though - for instance, he worked with Ron Paul on the Fed audit that uncovered trillions of dollars going to major banks.
I am officially gone from
Apparently everyone forgot that NASA doesn't exist any longer. It's now MASO - Muslim Aeronautics and Space Outreach. How could we forget that? It's what our Dear Leader decreed after all.
Massive flamebait. My god what happened to you as a child?
Truly spiritual christian types do not have a lot of time or room for hate.
You seem to have a lot of room for ad hominem, though. Nice troll.
Fiscal conservatives want us to quit wasting money. Space has nothing to do with it other than it is one place that can be cut easily. If you ask most conservatives, we would rather spend money on space exploration than social wellfare programs. Unfortunately, those programs can't be cut without much pain to the folks who need/want to depend on them.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Bullshit. The Dems wasted a lot of time trying to reach out to the Republicans by supporting their ideas. The individual mandate, end of life counseling (now called death panels), cap and trade, the DREAM act... all of those were Republican ideas that they turned violently against as soon as the Democrats supported them.
The whole reason NASA is even being cut is because the GOP took the country hostage last summer over the debt ceiling. Nevermind that most of the debt comes from the wars they supported and the tax cuts they demanded.
The really sick thing is the first time I remember hearing the mandate as a serious proposal was by some Republicans offering an alternative just after Hillary released her healthcare proposal in the early 90s.
Warped world, that Washington.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It is very difficult to look at the Bush presidency - some of it including control of both houses of congress - and come away with a feeling that the Republicans represent fiscal discipline.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Seriously? The LEFT is against NASA? Bush tried to kill the Voyager programs for a measly $4 million/year in savings. The 2 single farthest things we've ever sent into space sending back data we won't be able to reproduce for literally 40 years and he wanted to kill the program for that little bit of savings.
The LEFT is all about funding NASA, the problem is the RIGHT's obstinate blocking of anything related to INVESTMENT in our future. Why don't we have a Shuttle program? Yet give out more than NASA's ENTIRE budget to the oil industry EVERY YEAR?
The LEFT is not the problem.
On a more rational note, gerrymandered districts are a major problem on both sides of the aisle. But that's a more fundamentally broken part of our government.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
NASA is a civilian agency and does not fall under the auspices of the department of defense. Its budget isn't a part of the Defense budget; it's its own separate line item.
NASA does get some money from the military whenever NASA launches or services DoD hardware, but that's from the DoD side of the ledger, not NASA's.
People with brains, and a sharp sense of reality.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
It is worse than that. There is a group of people in the US Congress who just hate anything that the "other side" supports. It does not matter what it is they will work against anything that they think the other side wants to support. They care more about the success of their party than they do the country they swore to serve. The sad thing is that it has gone on long enough that two such groups have formed. We just have a bunch of obstinate dick heads now due to gerrymandering and an absent media.
Close. The media isn't absent, it's just serving its corporate masters which causes the "obstinate dickheads" in the "'two such groups" to pretend to be gerrymandering. Example: You have two friends. Friend A is a close friend and you also do some limited business together, which you like and the extra cash comes in handy. Friend B is a friend and has been there for you, but there's no real advantage to this friend, other than the occasional pat on the back. Friend A and B know each other, but aren't super close. Now, say something comes up and Friend A and B have conflicting opinions and you have to actually please A, but placate B. Well, that's where the gerrymandering comes in...or just not bringing the topic up much (NAFTA?). Friend A is Corporations, Friend B is Voters. Using that formula, you can pretty much predict the outcome of anything. Note: Friend A usually wins, but Friend B actually has all the power, he's just a little schizoid.
From 1991 on, NASA's budget has steadily gone down, through Democratic controlled congresses AND Republican controlled congresses. I think this is more of a reflection of the US becoming lax after the fall of the Soviet Union than some destruction committed by your anti-science boogeyman. Consider that the ISS began in the early mid 1990s and continued to be funded through consecutive Republican majorities from 1995 onwards, one cannot reasonably put all the credit on the LEFT and all the fault on the RIGHT.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Bullshit. The Dems wasted a lot of time trying to reach out to the Republicans by supporting their ideas. The individual mandate, end of life counseling (now called death panels), cap and trade, the DREAM act... all of those were Republican ideas that they turned violently against as soon as the Democrats supported them.
The whole reason NASA is even being cut is because the GOP took the country hostage last summer over the debt ceiling. Nevermind that most of the debt comes from the wars they supported and the tax cuts they demanded.
Sorry, but the $2-3 trillion in war funding over 10 years doesn't make a dent in the $1.5 Trillion added to the deficit every year.
Try again. Your boogie man is a lie.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The other independent is Bernie Sanders. Like him or not, he definitely sticks to his socialist positions. He's willing to make deals with strange bedfellows though - for instance, he worked with Ron Paul on the Fed audit that uncovered trillions of dollars going to major banks.
This is not strange to me. Progressives want government to do more and libertarians want government to do less, but neither wants the corporatism that we have today. At least in the short term, progressives and libertarians should be cooperating. Unfortunately, most people in both groups are too busy hating the other side to think this one through.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
No, it's not. Every single one of those satellites is visible, maybe with some near IR. I couldn't see a single one that can observe wavelengths longer than 1 um. That makes sense for commercial satellites, but it's not even close to sufficient for climate science.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Yeah -- Obamacare is really Romneycare is really Bob Dole's 1993 plan.
People like to say there's no real difference between the Democrats and Republicans, but that's not true. Democrats vote *for* Republican initiatives, Republicans vote against them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
In general, the 'we're going to the Moon, and then to Mars' was the start of it ... Added the stuff that NASA had to do, but no money to pay for it, so other departments got canibalized.
There was a lot of press about the folks in Florida who lost their jobs after the last shuttle lanuch ... but nothing about the people who were let go years before because their discipline had cuts so that the shuttle could continue going up past its planned life without any funding to pay for it.
And for JWST, there was a bit of a flap back in September ... search for 'james webb space telescope controversy' in your preferred search engine.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I would buy this argument if the Dems (or the GOP) were trying to even attempt to balance the budget. That way we could look to the future with hope for stopping fund cuts like these.
Instead, both sides - and 99% of Americans, for that matter - aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary.
The lower income people who aren't paying a penny in income taxes but getting thousands back each year as Earned Income Credits... (Ask some of them what they do with that money... "It's vacation time, baby!"... GUILTY
The corporations shielding their billions in income overseas... GUILTY
The Dems that won't lower the corporate tax rate and at least get a large chunk of the money being held overseas... GUILTY
The politicians who keep giving the 99% their cash "they deserve" by simply having a pulse... GUILTY
The GOP for invading Iraq without good evidence and dropping a cool trillion plus on it... GUILTY
The Defense Department's never-ending war machine (the amount spent on four or five F-22s - that will never see combat, BTW - would cover the satellite funding difference)... GUILTY
The Dems who do nothing to stop the millions of illegal immigrants from coming here to cut local costs (violent crime, ID theft, social program costs) - possibly because they see a giant block of future, loyal Dem voters - all in the name of "stopping racism", of course - GUILTY
The American public as a whole, for not giving a crap about others, all while lying/cheating/stealing a little more than the day before and saying, "the banks did it - why not us?", and ignoring the imminent destruction of the dollar and/or the American economy... "Just keep the time bomb going somehow, and I don't care how..." GUILTY
It's really sad to watch our American empire slowly dying as it has been for decades now, with us - the American people - doing all the wrong things (or nothing at all) to stop it. We might as well rename our country The Neo Roman Empire (or for you Asimov fans, Trantor)...
The real solution is for people to really start caring about each other again, but anybody talking all "faggy and shit" like that is laughed out of town...
Moore's law applies to integrated circuits. Although satellites use plenty of chips, the cost of ICs isn't the major driver of something like an observation platform. The biggest driver is launch cost. The earth-observing satellites aren't big and heavy because their designers are lazy and unaware of current technology; they are big and heavy because there's no getting around it. Being big and heavy, it costs tens of millions of dollars to launch them. The $100k you mention won't barely be enough to get a laptop with some solar panels into orbit.
Designing and building the satellite itself is probably the second biggest driver, because it takes a lot of highly skilled people, specialized facilities, uncommon expertise, and boatloads of testing to create a satellite that can operate reliably and produce accurate and useful data for a decade or longer. Next, there are the direct costs of the instruments themselves, which for an earth observing satellite run a few million apiece, because they are all custom, high-precision, and fairly esoteric.
The third major driver is the cost of operations once it is actually launched. In order for the satellite to be of any use, you need people monitoring and operating the satellite continuously. You'll also need an infrastructure to communicate with it, then gather, process, and disseminate the huge volumes of data it produces. What is the cost of a few dozen skilled, full-time employees working for a decade?
Capable, reliable satellites are just plain expensive, and no amount of DIY gumption will change that anytime soon. If there were cheaper ways to do it, the companies that are dropping a billion dollars on a new communications satellite would probably have found it by now. The only way it's going to get cheaper is by dropping launch costs. Once you don't have to worry about blowing a $50 million rocket launch, you can afford perhaps to make the satellite less robust and long-lived.
The really hilarious thing isn't that you cherry-picked data. It's that you linked back to the un-cherry-picked table:
Obama Deficits
FY 2013*: $901 billion
FY 2012*: $1,327 billion
FY 2011: $1,300 billion
FY 2010: $1,293 billion
Bush Deficits
FY 2009: $1,413 billion
FY 2008: $459 billion
FY 2007: $161 billion
Now, I won't ding Bush too badly for the bailout-derived deficit... but of course I'd have to give Obama the same latitude there. Now compare him to Clinton:
Year GDP-US $ billion Federal Deficit-fed $ billion
1990 5800.5 221.03 a
1991 5992.1 269.24 a
1992 6342.3 290.32 a
1993 6667.4 255.05 a
1994 7085.2 203.18 a
1995 7414.7 163.95 a
1996 7838.5 107.43 a
1997 8332.4 21.89 a
1998 8793.5 -69.27 a
1999 9353.5 -125.61 a
2000 9951.5 -236.24 a
2001 10286.2 -128.23 a
2002 10642.3 157.75 a
2003 11142.2 377.59 a
2004 11853.3 412.73 a
2005 12623 318.35 a
2006 13377.2 248.18 a
2007 14028.7 160.71 a
2008 14369.1 458.55 a
2009 13939 1412.69 a
2010 14526.5 1293.49 a
2011 15094 1299.59 a
2012 15601.5 1326.95 b
Legend:
a - actual reported
b - budgeted estimate in US fy13 budget
Clinton gets the blame for 1993-2001. His maximum deficit was 255 billion, his first year. His best year was 2000 with a 236 billion surplus. Now look at those Bush years again...
Now to be totally fair, Clinton did benefit from a tax and cost cutting package that cost Bush I his 2nd term. He also had a nice dot-com bubble at the end there.
Of course, Bush inherited an actual surplus and benefited from a much larger housing bubble.
So yeah, Bush cannot claim to be a fiscal conservative. Republicans have zero claim to that title right now.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Obviously, finger-pointing is the answer. Just look at nearly every comment on this news story. The consensus solution for NASA's problems is clearly finger-pointing and trying to find someone to blame.
Religion-haters are sure it's the fault of the religionists. Military-haters aren't sure whose fault it is, but did they mention they hate the military? Ditto for the banker-haters and the millionaire-haters. Leftists are sure it's the fault of the right. Rightists are sure it's the fault of the left. The "use Science as a wedge issue" crowd are sure it's because of the War on Science (tm). No one has mentioned the War on Women (tm) yet, so I guess NASA doesn't poll well with women.
Here's an alternate idea -- NASA isn't getting funded for three reasons:
1. NASA doesn't have very many votes to sell
2. There's a lot less uncommitted money in the GDP. The money that is there is already over-committed to retirement spending, health-care spending, and repayment of debt. Investments in the future are hard to justify because ROIs are down.
3. The US no longer has a culture that can unify. On anything. Ever. So all government spending is either for "our side" or "their side", never for the common good. This leads some (including me) to the conclusion that very little money should be spent by government -- until the culture swings back to where we can unify on some things again.
You're argument is that the Dems have had control of congress for 2 years out of 12 means it wasn't GOP controlled?
The only difference is the Dems when in the minority didn't pull what the GOP has done since 2010. They allowed votes on controversial issues except for a few judges they opposed. The GOP on the other hand has issued more filibusters in the last 2 years than the previous 30 years COMBINED.
If Harry Reid had the balls to change the rules in 2010 this wouldn't have happened and we'd be a damn sight better off now. But Reid has proven to be one of the most ineffectual Senate Leaders in history.
Combine that with a GOP who open admitted they top priority was stopping Obama. Not actually helping the country, just stopping anything the President and the Dems wanted. Patriots my ass. Treason is a bit strong, but anti-American seems good enough for me.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The economy boomed because it was fueled by unsustainable mortgages and credit card debt. And then before that, we had an Internet bubble.
Bush cut taxes and we had a boom. Bush Sr and Clinton raised taxes and we had a boom. Both booms were followed by a bust. IMHO, bumping or lowering the tax rate by a few percent doesn't really affect the economy as much as people claim, and probably a lot less than say the Fed's monetary policy. It does significantly affect government revenues though, all other things being equal (e.g. without a crash or boom).
"Under current law, CBO projects, budget deficits will drop markedly over the next few years—to $1.1 trillion in 2012, $704 billion in 2013, and $533 billion in 2014."
And that's without letting the Bush tax cuts expire, or raising taxes on the 1%.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
"It should also be noted that the US took in MORE money after the Bush tax cuts than before."
Like there's a cause and effect? That also happens to be the period during which the financial sector ran amok and banks and mortgage lenders encouraged people to cash in -- and spend -- their home equity.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The Dems who do nothing to stop the millions of illegal immigrants from coming here to cut local costs (violent crime, ID theft, social program costs) - possibly because they see a giant block of future, loyal Dem voters - all in the name of "stopping racism", of course - GUILTY
You said some stuff I agree with, and some stuff I don't. This one, though, annoys me.
What the hell have the Republicans done? Building a very expensive, and completely ineffective, wall doesn't count. The Republicans even adopted a very nonsensical policy of "We must keep them all out, before we can do anything about the ones that are here".
Both sides LOVE illegal immigrants. Democrats love the idea of the eternally-forthcoming, yet never coming, wave of Latino liberal voters. Republicans love them because they are an infinite font of cheap labor, which can suppress wages and break unions. No one wants to kill illegal immigration.
our American empire
For some reason this phrase doesn't fill me with the glee I suppose it should.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Progressives see libertarians as either Republicans or anarchists, and libertarians see Progressives as big-government people who don't realize they've already won.