There’s no money to run White House tours, but apparently there’s money to pull one of Al’s pet projects out of mothballs.
Satellite shelved after 2000 election to now fly
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is proposing dusting off and finally launching an old environmental satellite championed by Al Gore but shelved a dozen years by his 2000 rival George W. Bush.
Obama proposed Wednesday spending nearly $35 million in his 2014 budget to refurbish a satellite, nicknamed GoreSat by critics, that’s been sitting in storage after it was shelved in 2001, months after Bush took office. It cost about $100 million by then with NASA’s internal auditors faulting its cost increases.
In 1998, Gore, then vice president, proposed the idea of a satellite that would head nearly 1 million miles out in deep space in a special gravity balancing area between Earth and the Sun. The satellite would gaze at Earth, beam down a continuous picture of our planet and take what scientists said was needed climate change measurements.
It originally was named Triana after the sailor on Christopher Columbus’s crew who first sighted land in the Americas. NASA later changed its name to Deep Space Climate Observatory or DISCOVR. But it often got called GoreSat by opponents who called it an expensive screensaver for the vice president.
More: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/satellite-shelved-after-2000-election-now-fly
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Readers may recall this comment from “DAV” on WUWT:
Al has claimed to be American technology’s biggest boon (invented the Internet donchya know) yet was almost solely responsible for the Triana spacecraft (aka GoreSat in some circles now known as DSCOVR). The only spacecraft conceived without a mission — in a Lagrangian orbit no less. Al’s idea essentially: we should have a camera in orbit constantly looking at the Earth. You should have seen the scrambling to find things for it to do. The final mission instrument complement was all after the fact add-on. When it comes to technology I think Al is clueless.
What misleads Al isn’t the “consensus” so much as belief in his own ability to forecast the direction of the wind.
Disclosure: I worked on Triana.
Given that it is now more than a decade old, I wonder if the technology is even worth launching?
Wikipedia says:
The satellite’s original purpose was to provide a near-continuous view of the entire Earth and make that live image available via the Internet. Gore hoped not only to advance science with these images, but also to raise awareness of the Earth itself, updating the influential The Blue Marble photograph taken by Apollo 17.
Yeah, “expensive screensaver” about covers it.
UPDATE: Further investigation reveals this might have some value after all, and while Mr. Gore might get his screensaver we might also get a solar warning system. Maybe this spacecraft finally has a mission:
details: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1102/21dscovr/
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would manage the DSCOVR mission as an operational sentinel to give notice of approaching solar storms with potentially calamitous consequences for terrestrial electrical grids, communications, GPS navigation, air travel, satellite operations and human spaceflight.
“The FY2012 funds would support the refurbishment of an existing NASA satellite, DSCOVR,” said Jane Lubchenco, NOAA’s administrator. “This acquisition will allow NOAA to continue to receive vital data to help anticipate and mitigate space weather damage, which could potentially result in costs to the United States of $1 to $2 trillion.”
NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer, launched in 1997, is the only spacecraft currently providing short-term warnings of geomagnetic storms. ACE is also stationed at the L1 point, giving forecasters about a 40-minute warning of approaching solar events that could disrupt life and economic activity on Earth.
ACE is operating 12 years beyond its design life and could fail at any time.
Replacing ACE would be of value, the question is will this repurposed spacecraft do the job adequately?
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I am disappointed in the lack of positive response to this satellite. It may not be a totally good idea, but perhaps we could begin modeling the clouds if we had better data like we could get from this type of input. By the way, people, ad hominem remarks are a big turn off.
“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by really smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
Mark Twain
Yeah, we can monitor the clouds sooo much better from a million miles away than from lower orbits where we already have weather sats. Genius!
I can see earth from space anytime I want on Dish network, they have a live feed from their sat. I’m betting one of Gores buddies or companies has an interest in this bird.
It looks a bit like a dalek to me.
I bet if it blacks out (ceases to funtion), it’ll be blamed on global warming.
Erm, let’s get some perspective here. $35 M is conservatively 3-4 days worth of the military Aid given to Israel unconditionally so really it is not such a big deal in the context of government spending of your hard earned tax dollars.
After reading the AP story, I take back my initial snottiness.
“The new launch, paid for by the Air Force, is set for November 2014. It will be run by NOAA. Acting NOAA chief Kathryn Sullivan said its main mission will to give Earth warning when solar storms — which can zap power systems on the ground and fry satellite electronics — are on the way. That job is now being done by a NASA satellite that has surpassed its scheduled lifetime, she said.”
That is a warning system of value and updating is probably a good idea.
Severian: You don’t want to “monitor clouds”, you want full spectrum data on total radiation FROM Earth, reflected light and IR. And you want this for the whole globe, thus more than one sat. Once you have this, there’s no modeling or wussname needed. You just compare it to incoming radiation, and you have a nice empirical data set based on actual measurement.
The whole point is that you don’t have to bother with details, such as clousd formation. You measure the energy balance, and thus the resulting temperature trend directly. Not fashionable, I know, but pretty clever all the same.
Present practice in climate science is similar to particle physcisists saying “Nah! We don’t need the LHC at CERN, we can just model the results based on adjusted data from the old accelerators.”
In real science the raw data is the holy grail. You always want more, and above all, more accurate data. This is what makes the criticisms of Anthonys work so weird. You _always_ want to improve the quality of your measurements. The politics come later, if at all. If you measure temperature and have a badly placed thermometer, you FIX IT! You do not apply tweaks and adjustments that are “as good as” the real data. You improve the quality of your measurements as far as you possibly can, THEN you do whatever tweaking you must, if neccessary, and go from there.
Improving the quality of raw measurements is ALWAYS a good thing(tm) in science. Within the realm of the scientific method it is absolutely and objectively not only good, but necessary to achieve meaningful results. So Anthonys work on improving station quality should be lauded on that basis. Period. The ad hominems and other nonsens are IRRELEVANT. Not just tasteless and wrong – they don’t matter! Raw data is data, and it’s as holy as anything gets in science. Improve it, and you do good science. Claim that data quality don’t matter and you’re not really doing science at all.
The satellite has probably been updated with warmist code to “adjust” raw data.
“Sorry, Anthony mate, but if anyone needs to apologise here it’s you. I have far too much respect for you to call you a ‘useful idiot’. You are, rather, what Von Mises called a ‘useful innocent’. Not only have you needlessly conceded territory to a ruthless, implacable and dishonest enemy but you have unwittingly betrayed those virtues — courage, open-mindedness and intellectual rigour — which have made Watts Up With That so justly successful. When you’ve studied Areopagitica and Swift’s A Modest Proposal, when you’ve read up on Gramsci, the ‘Big Lie’ in Mein Kampf and Agenda 21, then get back to me. Till then, don’t presume to lecture me about the proper use of metaphor in the culture wars any more than I’d presume to lecture you on the correct siting of weather stations.”
Very sad you felt the need to have a go at JD…verry sad.
REPLY: It might help me understand if you wrote sensibly, Who’s JD and where did I have “a go” at him/her and when did I ever lecture you? – Anthony
UPDATE: his cryptic comment was missing this link: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100211704/apologise-to-michael-mann-anthony-id-rather-eat-worms/
-Anthony
ANYTHING to do with Al Gore, I don’t trust. Meanwhile, haven’t we spent enough on global weather=climate concerns?
They might claim the satellite is really for something else, but I don’t even trust them on that. You can bet once it’s out there, they’ll say, “Oh, look, you can see the clouds from here. Let’s model that data.” And they’ll get right back to building alarm with “new” findings horrifying enough to scare the pants off everybody, exactly as they intended to.
It doesn’t matter how cheap it is if it’s a waste of money.
OLD TECH, but…
I’d be for launching this turkey if they would put Al Gore on it. Otherwise, instead of sending it into deep space, it should be deep sixed.
Yeah, to advance Muslim relations, it would be better to park it in a location where it could continuously beam an image of a crescent moon.
Actually, I’ve more than once posted that unless we have something like this, all the rest is meaningless. Of course, just one is NOT enough. Both day and night side need to be monitored, and I think a bare minimum of two, but more likely 4 such observers are required. Fortunately, we have 4 nice easy Lagrange points to park them in, preferably L1 and L2, but how easy IS it to actually maintain stationkeeping over long time periods?
Aren’t STEREO sitting in L4 and L5? Can STEREO coexist with others? Do they slowly orbit each other?
And I am sorry to continue the “bashing”, but any tech that’s been sitting on a shelf for 10 years is already hopelessly outdated. Just in the last few years we’ve got some absolutely incredible advances in SMD Gyros and inertial trackers and other stuff that would be SO useful for this application.
When it comes to technology I think Al is clueless.
Technology, science…. His cluelessness is monumental. The only thing AlGore is good at is scamming money from naive people.
From Wikipedia about Triana/Discover/GORESAT
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In 1999, NASA’s Inspector General reported that “the basic concept of the Triana mission was not peer reviewed”, and “Triana’s added science may not represent the best expenditure of NASA’s limited science funding.”[3]
Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences whether the project was worthwhile. The resulting report stated that the mission was “strong and scientifically vital.”[4]
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So it appears that this satellite could generate some useful information. Why is this a bad thing? We should try to eliminate any emotional reaction to Gore when evaluating this.
How are we getting these warnings NOW? (And yes, we are getting some indrect notice at present)
/rhetorical Q
.
There’s already enough junk clustered at the L nodes in erratic orbits that I give this thing a week before it slams into a billion-year-old rock and goes dark. The Gore effect will not be denied.
Is this the same National Academy of Sciences that says AGW is … oh, never mind the question …
.
Cool. How nostalgic to have a steam powered satellite chug it’s way into space! Lets just hope it’s wings hold up!
@jeez
OK you have a point.
I looked up the details: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1102/21dscovr/
Replacing ACE would be of value, the question is will this repurposed spacecraft do the job adequately?
It would be a really cheap launch, just use Al Gore’s hot air for fuel, it’d get there in a minute , escape velocity reached in seconds!
I am totally surprised by the negative reaction to this direct and empirical experiment. This measured signal is exactly what skeptics have been demanding for decades. I thought the original bird was never flown because, it may have provide the silver bullet, to werewarming. If delta flux goes hard positive OR negative, we NEED to know. Lets not throw the shinning baby out with the Gore filthy bathwater. GK
Flashman says:
April 11, 2013 at 7:26 pm
What you said – I say to myself everyday I am on climate blogs. More measurements, better measurements. Mankind is warming the earth with his CO2 emissions. Ought to be an important thing to measure. Not estimate, extrapolate, interpolate, model, average, guess at, point to radiant physics, but actually pay attention to measuring. Also I too am just never-endingly astounded at the people that bag on Anthony for calling for better measurement. Scientists? Not by my measure. But I’m just an engineer so maybe I’m weird or something.
Erm, let’s get some perspective here. $35 M is conservatively half a days worth of the subsidy given to the U.S.A by Canada due to the stranded Alberta Oil so really it is not such a big deal in the context of government spending of your hard earned tax dollars.