OT Rocket with NASA global warming satellite crashes

To explain the crash, "It just froze up".

Quick, somebody call Al Gore, the Global Warming Satellite just froze up, more proof of the AL Gore hoax. This should be the new definition of irony for Al and his followers. Now this is funny!

Hi Michael, I watched the NASA press conference this morning on the loss of the satellite. This was more than a simple error, as the telemetry indicated that the launch activities were correctly sequenced (signals sent to pyro devices that should have separated the nose fairing, allowing the next stage to boost the (now much lighter) payload into the correct orbit.

It seems the fairing "froze up", and didn't split apart as it should. It could have been an assembly failure (parts not aligned right), a literal freezing (if moisture got into areas it shouldn't have), or some other issue. I hope the investigating committee finds the likely cause.

I was part of a previous launch team that lost a satellite in a similar manner, the pryo's didn't activate an adapter cone split event, leaving two small payloads in a useless orbit. At least we got a chance to do a reflight some years later.

I can say with certainty that there's a major human cost when these problems occur, many people put years of work (and stake their careers or theses on) the success of a mission, and when it goes TU it hurts.

BTW, I respect you enough (you're no "Gunner") that it's disappointing that you think it's such a funny event, and that its mission was of such little consequence. Science is by definition the act of finding out and proving, without instruments to do so, how will we know if GW is real or not?

Toolpost

Tp, The event itself wasn't funny, failures and huge expenditures are never funny. I simply saw humor in the wording, "the global warming satellite froze up". I try to never leave my sense of humor at home, "especially these days". I do find Al Gore quite funny, he's the new Chicken Little. At the recent Global Warming seminar the temps were sub zero, more irony. The irony in the wording was quite humorous, now if the economy were to thaw out some, that would be a good thing. Michael

Micheal, You have NO RIGHT to Diss Al Gore! After all, he invented the internet! Without him, you'd be writing letters back and forth.

Then, he invented global warming, think of the trillions of $ to be made from that! And now he invents carbon! Untold trillons of $ to be scammed from the public. Some accounts, quadrupling your energy bills. How many people could accomlish all of that? Think of the revenue he can create for his "associates". Untold riches, who ever would have thought of taxing carbon? What will be next? Taxing Hydrogen? One of the most abundant elements in the universe? It is better than using leaves as money.

I think you are a jealous, and petty. Dissing someone who has accomplished so much, with so little. Now, get out an envelope, and a pen, and write out a carerful response, get a stamp... Like you would have to do, without the Great Gore, having given us the internet. And the new information society, where we create untold wealth without manufacturing anything, just by manipulating money! Let the third world peasants do all the "dirty manufacturing" We will create all wealth from the thin air, by manipulating "information". ( Or did I mean to say "facts" ? )

"Al Gore hoax" ? so, like you are more intelligent than he ? where's your nobel prize man ? what are you doing posting here ? you should be out there saving the world from the hoaxster- don't delay !

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Al Gore got a Nobel prize for creating hysteria among his lemmings. I must admit, to be nothing more than an unemployed ex VP, many people are buying his books and believing his tales, they are the mistaken. Enjoy your books!

Mars is warming too, must be the effect of the landers.

GW is the new boogie man, kinda like PJ O'Rourke said;

"The principle feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things -- war and hunger and date rape -- liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things. It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal."

In defense, although it is obviously junk science driven by emotion, it does drive people to pull their heads out and try to better stewards of our little blue marble.

We'd better aim a little higher on that stewardship thing. Reality, not Gorebal Warming, is beginning to intrude.

February 22, 2009 Drought Adds to Hardships in California By JESSE McKINLEY MENDOTA, Calif. - The country's biggest agricultural engine, California's sprawling Central Valley, is being battered by the recession like farmland most everywhere. But in an unlucky strike of nature, the downturn is being deepened by a severe drought that threatens to drive up joblessness, increase food prices and cripple farms and towns.

Across the valley, towns are already seeing some of the worst unemployment in the country, with rates three and four times the national average, as well as reported increases in all manner of social ills: drug use, excessive drinking and rises in hunger and domestic violence.

With fewer checks to cash, even check-cashing businesses have failed, as have thrift stores, ice cream parlors and hardware shops. The state has put the 2008 drought losses at more than $300 million, and economists predict that this year's losses could swell past $2 billion, with as many as 80,000 jobs lost.

"People are saying, 'Are you a third world country?' " said Robert Silva, the mayor of Mendota, which has a 35 percent unemployment rate, up from the more typical seasonal average of about 20 percent. "My community is dying on the vine."

Even as rains have washed across some of the state this month, greening some arid rangeland, agriculture officials say the lack of rain and the prospect of minimal state and federal water supplies have already led many farmers to fallow fields and retreat into survival mode with low-maintenance and low-labor crops.

Last year, during the second year of the drought, more than 100,000 acres of the 4.7 million in the valley were left unplanted, and experts predict that number could soar to nearly 850,000 acres this year.

All of which could mean shorter supplies and higher prices in produce aisles - California is the nation's biggest producer of tomatoes, almonds, avocados, grapes, artichokes, onions, lettuce, olives and dozens of other crops - and increased desperation for people like Agustin Martinez, a

20-year veteran of the fields who generally makes $8 an hour picking fruit and pruning.

"If I don't have work, I don't live," said Mr. Martinez, a 39-year-old father of three who was waiting in a food line in Selma, southeast of Fresno. "And all the work is gone."

In Mendota, the self-described cantaloupe center of the world, a walk through town reveals young men in cowboy hats loitering, awaiting the vans that take workers to the fields. None arrive.

The city's main drag has a few quiet businesses - a boxing gym, a liquor store - and tellingly, two busy pool halls. The owner of one hall, Joseph R. Riofrio, said that his family had also long owned a grocery and check-cashing business in town, but that he had just converted to renting movies, figuring that people would rather stay at home in hard times.

"We're not going to give up," Mr. Riofrio said. "But people are doing bad."

Just down the highway in Firebaugh, José A. Ramírez, the city manager, said a half-dozen businesses in its commercial core had closed, decimating the tax base and leaving him to "tell the Little League they'd have to paint their own lines" on the local diamond.

The situation is particularly acute in towns along the valley's western side, where farmers learned on Friday that federal officials anticipate a "zero allocation" of water from the Central Valley Project, the huge New Deal system of canals and reservoirs that irrigates three million acres of farmland. If the estimate holds and springtime remains dry, it would be first time ever that farmers faced a season-long cutoff from federal waters.

"Farmers are very resilient, we make things happen, but we've never had a zero allocation," said Stephen Patricio, president of Westside Produce, a melon handler and harvester. "And I might not be very good at math, but zero means zero."

While California has suffered severe dry spells before, including a three-year stint ending in 1977 and a five-year drought in the late '80s and early '90s, the ill effects now are compounded by the recession and other factors.

Federal, state and local officials paint a grim picture of a system taxed as it has never been before by a growing population, environmental concerns and a labyrinth of water supply contracts and agreements, some dating to the early 20th century. In addition to the federal water supplies, farmers can irrigate with water provided by the state authorities, drawn from wells and bought or transferred from other farmers. Such water may not always be the best quality, said Mark Borba, a fourth-generation farmer in Huron, Calif.

"But it's wet," he said.

Richard Howitt, the chairman of the agricultural and resource economics department at the University of California, Davis, estimates that 60,000 to

80,000 jobs could be lost - including in ancillary businesses - and that as much as $2.2 billion in crop and other losses could be caused by restrictions on water and the drought, which he called "hydrologically as bad as 1977 and economically as bad as 1991."

"You're talking about field workers, processing handlers, people packing melons, trucking hay, sprayers, people selling tractors, people selling lunches to people selling tractors," Mr. Howitt said. "And in some of these small west-side towns, it's going to hit the people who are least able to adapt to it."

One of the hardest hit areas is the farmland served by the Westlands Water District, which receives water exclusively from the Central Valley Project and distributes it to 600,000 acres in Fresno and Kings Counties. Sarah Woolf, a spokeswoman for the district, said that her 700 members expected to leave 300,000 to 400,000 acres fallow and that some might not come back to farm at all.

"Everyone's trying to go down fighting," Ms. Woolf said. "But there will be significant companies that will go out of business, as well as families that have been farming for generations, if it doesn't get better."

The outlook for things getting better quickly is dim, despite forecasts of rain this week. Last month, California officials estimated the snowpack in the Sierra, a primary source of water for the state when it melts in the spring, at 61 percent of normal. On Friday, the State Department of Water Resources said it would deliver just 15 percent of its promised contracts, a level it was able to maintain only because of the recent spate of rain. "It's pathetic," said Lester A. Snow, the department's director.

Lynette Wirth, a spokeswoman for the United States Bureau of Reclamation, said water levels in all federally managed reservoirs in California were well below normal, with "abysmal" carryover from the previous year.

"There's been no meaningful precipitation since last March," Ms. Wirth said.

Farmers, of course, are also dealing with issues unrelated to rain, including tight credit from banks and recent court decisions meant to protect fish that have limited the transfer of water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which feeds snowmelt to farmbound canals. Many farmers refer to a "man-made drought" caused by restrictions.

At the same time, environmental groups say they also fear a range of potential problems, including depletion of the valley aquifer from well pumping, possible dust-bowl conditions in areas of large patches of fallow ground and concern about salmon and other species. "It's a tough year for the environment, and people," said Doug Obegi, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

JC

Here ya go.

Before spending another $270 mil on another sattelite, try a couple of grand for a good telescope ---

Environment & Climate News > November 2005 Environment Environment > Climate: Science

Email a Friend Written By: James M. Taylor Published In: Environment & Climate News > November 2005 Publication date: 11/01/2005 Publisher: The Heartland Institute

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The planet Mars is undergoing significant global warming, new data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) show, lending support to many climatologists' claims that the Earth's modest warming during the past century is due primarily to a recent upsurge in solar energy.

Martian Ice Shrinking Dramatically

According to a September 20 NASA news release, "for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress." Because a Martian year is approximately twice as long as an Earth year, the shrinking of the Martian polar ice cap has been ongoing for at least six Earth years.

The shrinking is substantial. According to Michael Malin, principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera, the polar ice cap is shrinking at "a prodigious rate."

"The images, documenting changes from 1999 to 2005, suggest the climate on Mars is presently warmer, and perhaps getting warmer still, than it was several decades or centuries ago," reported Yahoo News on September 20.

Solar Link Possible

Scientists are not sure whether the Martian warming is entirely due to Mars-specific forces or may be the result of other forces, such as increasing solar output, which would explain much of the recent asserted warming of the Earth as well.

Far as I know, we haven't been putting up any coal burning power plants on Mars.

JMHO

Jim

Its those two Mars Rover SUVs we sent up there, spewing Freon and carbon monoxide out the tailpipes.

you really are in the wrong line of work then

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Earth is millions of years old. so you are saying that in millions of years of environment that supports human life, Al Gore has picked up on such drastic change since he lost his VP gig? I give Al some credit but he isn't quite that intelligent. What evolved over millions of years in comparison to 8 years post VP is less than milliseconds, dude, the sky isn't falling. Al's gig is now in book sales and speaker fees. One more thing, when Al was holding a position of power as VP, why did any of these revelations never come up then? Al is a hoaxter.

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Well I'm 51 years old and I've noticed that the lakes around here NEVER freeze over hard enough to ice skate on as was common when I was a child and that Red Cedar trees over the past 5 years or so seem to be dying off quite rapidly in my area, pretty sure no records exist of this having ever having happened over the past several hundred thousand years.

Personally I feel a more responsible position is to err towards the safe side rather than to sit denying the very notion that rapid global climate change could indeed be occuring and that humans might in fact be the primary cause of it.

But if it makes you feel better thumbing your nose at anyone that doesn't hold your particular point of view on the issue then well I guess go for it..though probably the smarter thing to do would be to follow the lead of the Baluga group--positioning yourself so as to profit from the situation :

"The 2008 minimum was slightly larger than 2007. On August 27, both the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage were ice-free. This was the first time in recorded history that both passages have been open at the same time. The North Pole could at that point have been circumnavigated although the icebreaker Polarstern was the only ship to actually make the circumnavigation."

"The Beluga group of Bremen, Germany, announced plans to send the first ship through the Northern Sea Route in 2009, thereby cutting 4,000 nautical miles off the voyage from Germany to Japan"

We have citrus growers here that let the fruit fall to the ground. Too expensive to pick and they can't even give it away to food banks. They had volunteers to pick the fruit and donate it to food banks/needy families but insurance company put a stop to it, seems the law doesn't allow (or recognize) a signed waver stating they won't sue should they be hurt while on the property. So this fresh tree ripened "Organic" fruit goes to waste.

I took photos of an orange grove two days ago showing the fruit falling to the ground just in case someone thinks it's B.S.

Tom

California, a state that breeds 'enviromentalists', like maggots on rotting meat is absurd. Explain how So. Cal can bring water from 250 miles away while in many parts of the US new construction requires an 'Enviromental Impact Study'?

So Cal has impacted a lot of enviroments. Close it down.

Wes

The largest aquifer in North America is under southern California Wes and we bought the water rights all the way north to Canada in the 20's. Growing food in the desert is stupid unless you charge realistic prices for the water. The water and farm lobbies have prevented that.

JC

This is a sample of the nuts around here

SACRAMENTO - The order by a federal judge to reduce pumping by 30% in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta leaves water suppliers who rely on the California Aqueduct, including those in the Antelope Valley, in a bind. Just last week U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger issued his final word regarding the slowdown in pumping operations at the Harvey O. Banks, the starting point of the 444-mile California Aqueduct, core to the State Water Project that furnishes drinking and agricultural water to much of Southern California. Wanger mandated the pumping reduction in order to protect an endangered fish species, the Delta smelt, that are indigenous to the area, AV water purveyors said. Environmental groups had pushed to shut off the pumps, blaming the equipment for a decline in the smelt population, which were being sucked into the pumps and killed.

Dave B

Aquifer in N.A> is under Southern Ca. ??? say what ?

What is the name - where ? They get N. Ca. snow melt shipped south. Mart>> "John R. Carroll" wrote:

Orange County, and it's properly maintained.

And?

JC