PrintFebruary 24, 2009
Rocket carrying global warming satellite plunges into Pacific: UPDATED
At about 1:30 this morning, a Taurus XL rocket equipped with NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite, which was set to record world-wide carbon emissions, lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Shortly after liftoff a mechanical failure caused the whole works to fall into the Pacific Ocean, leaving scientists with no way to record how much greenhouse gas this rocket needlessly spewed into the atmosphere or to measure exactly how much junk ended up polluting the delicate ecosystem that is the Pacific Ocean.
I'm calling on Al Gore to spearhead a push to calculate the carbon footprint of global warming scientists, so we can know exactly how much the study of global warming contributes to global warming.
UPDATE by Dr. Gregory Young:
We read from Bloomberg news today that NASA has just lost a satellite in a failed launch today because it was too heavy…. Apparently, they added some extra weight which disallowed the craft to enter orbit, sending it crashing somewhere into the Antarctic ocean.
Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- A satellite launched from California failed to reach orbit today, crashing into the sea near Antarctica and dooming a $273 million mission to study global-warming gases. The craft contained a monitoring device designed to collect 8 million measurements every 16 days. Scientists hoped to use the data to find out how much CO2 is absorbed by the forests, grasslands and oceans, which are collectively known as “sinks.”
While launch and separation of the rocket’s first stage went as planned, a clamshell-shaped “fairing” covering the satellite failed to open, meaning it was too heavy to reach orbit, Brunschwyler said on NASA’s online television station.
“As a direct result of carrying that extra weight, we could not reach orbit,” Brunschwyler said. Indications are the satellite “landed just short of Antarctica, in the ocean.”
Let’s see if we understand this correctly. NASA scientists actually built and approved of a craft that was too heavy to reach and obtain orbit. Too heavy? Don’t we have the competence within NASA anymore that can calculate the thrust necessary to lift a certain weight into orbit? We’re talking nothing more complicated here than straight algebra.
Isn’t anybody doing the math? Is anybody doing any checking? Where are our Liberal Institutions of Higher Propaganda when we need them?
And of all things they were trying to launch, it was a satellite that was to measure how much CO2 was being absorbed by nature’s “sinks.”
But wait … haven’t global warming proponents at NASA been telling us that even slight CO2 increases above 385 ppm will prove catastrophic for Earth?
So how come they’re just getting around to admitting to us that they still haven’t determined how much CO2 the natural “sinks” can absorb, despite the fact that many scientists (including me ) have critically reminded them of these CO2 sinks. A rational person would think that the relationship of the sinks to CO2 would be important to note before dramatically pronouncing to the world that even miniscule rises in CO2 levels will cause an extinction event!
But as we know, slight increases in CO2 will not significantly harm life on this planet. Indeed, for those who have not kept up with the evidence, we already know historically that the earth and all of life on it can easily handle up to 7,000 ppm of CO2. As I have written , more CO2 might even be good for the atmosphere and for life on earth.
More tomfoolery is surely on its way as NASA Global Warming proponents have extra stimulus money to throw at their dog and pony show for years to come.
