In the NYT, a story about "endangered satellites" that orbit the earth and provide essential data for tracking storms like Hurricane Sandy. But because of "years of mismanagement, lack of financing and delays in launching replacements," they could begin falling apart—with no functional plan in sight to maintain those resources.

  • http://www.spockosbrain.com spocko

    Let The Market pay for it.  Surely we don’t really NEED this information, it’s just nice to have. If we really needed it we would be willing to pay for it, right? And private enterprise is the the way these things work best. If only Government would get out of the way, private enterprise could throw up a few satellites and charge the Government a reasonable fee (plus profit). 

    They will want you to believe that “private industry” could do all this better but what they neglect to say how much that will cost. But we should just trust them and hand over the contracts like we did to KBR in Iraq.  

  • Boundegar

    What kind of people want to squander YOUR money on satellites?  Tax-and-spend liberals, that’s who!

  • http://www.facebook.com/postelwait Cameron Postelwait

    i say we make the network news station that brags the most about ratings take care of it.

  • anansi133

    considering how far we’ve let the infrastructure down here degrade, why should our assets up there be treated any different?

    • acerplatanoides

       Perhaps if we allowed orbiting tax havens….

  • http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman

    The gods control the weather.  We don’t need satellites, we need priests with an interest in meteorology.

  • http://twitter.com/BonzoDog1 BonzoDog1

    The church ladies can have a bake sale.

  • Shinkuhadoken

    If only there were some sort of program, one that could shuttle astronauts to space to fix and launch satellites as well as perform scientific advancement for the public good.

    • http://thisisonlya.blogspot.com robcat2075

       The Shuttle as we knew it couldn’t get close to the geo-stationary orbit of the satellites in question. However, there is no shortage of launch capability; only unmanned rockets are required.

  • gadgetphile

    Deja vu. Didn’t we go through this same problem say, twenty years ago?

  • Don

    I used to work at Raytheon in their JPSS program.  The weather satellites we’re talking about are in polar orbit, not geostationary orbit.  I asked why the satellites have a projected useful life of only 5 years, and was told that battery failure is the usual cause of death.