If we can't see it it doesn't exist!!
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I read this article does a really bad summarization to me as someone who has not been tracking these satellites. I had to go look at the wiki for the OCO's. Turns out that OCO-2 & OCO-3 are in orbit and operating.
So as I understand this, Trump is not killing the launch of new Sat, but cutting off data collection on existing Sat launches. Further the reason these two SATs are so important is that although there are other Carbon Observers, they don't have the resolution these two do.
Overall, it's an entire waste of money to have built and spent something over a billion dollars, just to cut off the data that Oil companies don't want. (Or at least that's the perception.)
The article could have done a better job bottom lining this.
Christ, I read Satellites as Scientists, and ..didn't question it at all.
Calling it now. They'll scuttle these satellites, and the next day SpaceX will unveil a plan for their own, private weather satellite network that the US government will suddenly have money to pay up for. But it won't ever be accessible to plebs...
And the data coming off it will have temperature drift
Conservatives ruin everything.
Doomsday Cult disables satellites to reduce forewarning of hurricanes
Unexpected results at 12
This so neatly sums up the blithering insanity of the right - if the data counters their preferred view and cannot be discredited, then they have no choice but to.... hide the data.
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