On Jul 25, 2006, at 08:12, Andrew Turner wrote:
Tyler Mitchell wrote:
Indeed... and what about our vast oceans? Is our own inner-space
_ever_
going to be more fully explored by national administrations of this
magnitude?
That would come under NOAA, not NASA anyways. I would also think that
understanding the "home planet" would fall under this type of agency
as well. Earth sensing has a lot of differences from space
exploration. And NASA is already pulled in enough directions that it
has had difficulty making progress in any of them. By focusing on
fewer goals, hopefully it can achieve more in them. It can still serve
to develop/launch platforms for agencies like NOAA.
NASA tends to be the lead agency in developing new satellite
platforms and sensors, then when things become operational, data
management is transferred to USGS for land and NOAA for ocean/
atmosphere.
GOES-13, launched successfully on May 25, is one of a series of NOAA
satellites. "NASA builds and launches the satellites. NOAA operates
the satellites post commissioning and check-out period and uses the
data in weather forecasts, disaster management, public health, and
aviation safety." [1]
The develop/launch for NOAA is currently going horribly wrong. The
joint NOAA/NASA/Air Force satellite NPOESS is "more than $3 billion
over initial life-cycle cost estimates and 17 months behind
schedule" [2]
My completely uninformed opinion would be that by bringing the Air
Force into the mix, a previously successful partnership was perturbed
enough to bring things to a near standstill. I suspect that bringing
any 3rd party in would have caused problems, but to bring in an
agency with a fundamentally different mission, even if it's the
weather branch of the Air Force seems a bit overly ambitious. I think
the original idea was that the three agencies would be able to
realize a net savings over having to develop multiple satellites.
[1] http://science.hq.nasa.gov/missions/satellite_47.htm
[2] http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/05/npoess_over_bud.html
Andrew
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Andrew Turner
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http://highearthorbit.com Northville, Michigan, USA
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Allan Doyle
+1.781.433.2695
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