Going Off the Fiscal Cliff Could Mean Missing the Next Hurricane Sandy

Lasrick writes "Alex Knapp has an excellent article pointing out that NOAA satellites enabled NOAA to predict the 'left hook' of Hurricane Sandy into the Eastern Seaboard, which in turn enabled local governments to prepare. Those satellites are at risk and there will be a gap of about a year between 2017 and 2018, when the old ones fail and the new ones are scheduled to launch. There's no alternative to getting that data, and the so-called 'fiscal cliff' will drive an 8% cut to NOAA's satellite program, so that those replacement satellites may go up even later than 2018."

North Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

Just ask Kim YoungOne for some data from the North Korean satellites. They will clearly be ahead of NASA by then! :-)

Re:military satellites

[ColdWetDog]

Doesn't the USA military have any satellites capable of filling the temporary gap in NOAA ones?

Military weather is classified, you insensitive clod.

Re:Same tired argument from government bureaucrats

[carnaby_fudge]

Buy guns, they are durable goods that won't loose value if they are maintained or properly stored. Then you can either sell them to all the evil rich people left in their gated compounds or use the guns to lay siege to the rich bastards and just take all their stuff :-)

Re:Same tired argument from government bureaucrats

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you going to do, shoot at the hurricanes? I mean, sure they do have "eyes", but, well, you're going to be dissapointed. And wet.

Re:Multiple instruments

[Trilkin]

The NOAA uses birds? Great. Now PETA is going to lobby even harder.

Re:FTFY

[AK Marc]

No, he went with more reliable Greek bonds, not those junk US government bonds.

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Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Same tired argument from government bureaucrats

[Anonymous Coward]

The NOAA satellites provide essential data for climate science, so naturally theymust be shut down.