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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As commented direcly at: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/satellite-shelved-after-2000-election-now-fly
Seth, your are totally off base with this. DSCOVR, the refurbished Triana (GoreSat) is positively vital for providing warning of an impending CME (solar storm) with the potential for destroying electric power grids around the world for years.
DSCOVR will replace ACE, the only satellite providing that information, but it is well beyond its expected lifetime and col fail anytime. We are unbelievably fortunate that GoreSat was available to take on the indispensable role of ACE, whatever the cost (equivalent to shutting down radar network for severe weather warnings.
I’m disappointed you did not investigate before posting this mocking article and placing on the same level as shutting off White House visitors. I hope you will update the article to avoid the total misleading tenor of the current article.
See: http://tinyurl.com/7kvtnpb
http://tinyurl.com/6hm4z5p
and/or GOOGLE: space weather ace satellite DSCOVR
s.tracton@hotmail.com says:
April 12, 2013 at 8:47 am
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Your pretty much wrong on every point. Anyway, it’d be cheaper to build a new bird then to try to retrofit this kluged rust bucket.
It was a piece of garbage ,from the beginning, who’s only purpose was to provide a platform from which to launch propaganda. And this is what it will always be, despite what the Marxist ideologues running the National Academy of Science says on the mater.
Desert Yote: You do not know of what you speak. It is not cheaper to start from scratch, but that aside, getting a replacement up for ACE is essential ASAP. A new start would have taken several years more – perhaps up to a decade – than going with DSCOVER. and leave Earth without warning of an event that quite literally would threaten life as we know it. I assure you this is far from an exaggeration. If you do not believe this start with the links I cited. BTW: this threat is much more likely than a meteor crashing into earth, which the President and Congress (mostly) are likely to fund at the cost in hundreds of millions of millions.
I suggest you get beyond your obvious ideological leanings to consider the facts, which reflect the advice of all relevant experts on this subject.
TomE says: April 11, 2013 at 5:27 pm
We can launch an obsolete satellite with no purpose but we can not let kids visit the White House or put a needed carrier battle group into the Indian Ocean. Just who are the fools who are in charge?
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As far as I can tell from the info presented here, the money is to refurbish the satellite, not to launch it. An Earth-sun Lagrangian destination would require a dedicated launch of most likely an Atlas or Delta launch vehicle. That’s an addition of another $100 million or so.
The Air Force has agreed to provide the launch vehicle given its concern about national security issues (solar storms can kill satellites, military included; render GPS navigation useless, think missile targeting; drastically disrupt communications; radiation hazards to pilots and space-station astronauts, etc, etc!!). The so-called fools in charge know what they are doing; the real fools are those who mock this without taking a! serious look of what this is all about..
s.tracton@hotmail.com says:
April 12, 2013 at 8:47 am
Seth, your are totally off base with this. DSCOVR, the refurbished Triana (GoreSat) is positively vital for providing warning of an impending CME (solar storm)
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Because the sun is so massive compared to the earth, the L1 Lagrange point is 100 times closer to the earth than the sun. In other words, direct observation of the sun will give us 100 times greater warning of a CME than a satellite at L1.
Yes, it is closer for a good reason. Whether a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME ==> solar geomagnetic super storm) affects the Earth detrimentally or not is conditional on the relative alignment of the magnetic fields of the CME and Earth. If parallel, the effects will pass around the Earth – no sweat. If opposed, a CME geomagnetic storm can have disastrous consequences. And, the only warning of the alignment is from the L1 with the instrumentation aboard ACE and DSCOVER. Direct observations of the sun cannot determine the alignment. They can tell whether a CME is headed towards Earth, but not whether it will be significantly consequential.
s.tracton@hotmail.com says:
April 12, 2013 at 2:28 pm
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Hah, I worked an quite a few NASA projects over 15 years, expertise in Level S qualification. What have you done besides soaking up propaganda?
From what I’ve read, NASA is dusting off this satellite because it was nearly finished already and the money had already been spent. In fact, said an official from NASA, the main purpose of the satellite will not be what was originally intended, but to detect large solar flares before they hit earth so we don’t have a nationwide permanent blackout. The satellite currently up there is already past its projected life expectancy.
Jimbo,
“call it an ad-hominem”
OK, let’s add that he leases a zinc mine near a stream on his Kentucky property that contributes a substantial amount to pollution in said stream!!!
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-18-goremine_N.htm
He got his 1/2 mil rent and NOW wants the miners to work with enviros!!! I guess it isn’t pollution if no one is blowing the whistle on you!!
garymount says:
April 11, 2013 at 9:48 pm
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.
__________________________
Thank you very much.
Maybe they can put Al inside it and ship him off to outer space.
The history and purposes of DSCOVR were covered here at WUWT in detail in 2009 in a response to an article by Bob Tisdale. It was designed to monitor changes in albedo and energy flux that are an essential part of the sceptic debate over the AGW CO2 radiative model of climate versus the Heat Engine approach of Wilde, Eschenbach and others. As such it can play an important role in monitoring cloud movement as well as coverage and relate it to SW/OLR flux. It is a pity it did not fly to the original schedule but it fell victim to the problems with the Shuttle program and not, as has been implied in the past a conspiracy, to prevent the collection of this data – sorry I cannot find the reference to the latter but the details of the earlier response by adoucette are here:
DSCOVR Satellite
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/06/another-look-at-polar-amplification/
Bob Tisdale
June 7, 2009 at 7:46 am
Whilst agreeing that two or better four such satellites are needed for good coverage one is better than nothing.
The latest IEEE Spectrum has an article on this, http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/protecting-the-power-grid-from-solar-storms. Other than the usual gratuitous swipe about it being “grounded by politics and a change of administration” (I wonder which century it will be before some of us will stop blaming George W. for absolutely everything?), it points out that some suspect parts were found on the initial refurbishment, but doesn’t say whether they were faulty from the start. It also claims that no new instruments needed to be added for its new life.
Would be cheaper to put em all on food stamps and a “well” fare stipends, plus . . . it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out . . . . commonly known as apportionment of taxation revenue.
US govment can keep all the IP and sell the unit to AL, and he can sign one of those “standard” agreements that allows his new (silent partner), the US govment, to monopolize the IP, resulting patents, and anything new that is developed from his little endeavor for future revenue streams . . . . it’s a win/win the US gets some revenue, and potential revenue for patents etc . . . . And AL Gore . . . . he can prove his patriotism and help America pay down her debts . . . . and put his money where his mouth is.
AL . . . AL . . . . ??? Isn’t this a swell idea?