Not quite yet for NASA to begin it'[s new focus

[bernomatic]

With baited breath, I await the day NASA is changed over from the politically correct , feel good about others wile feeling bad about WASP's organization it has been for the past forty years, maybe longer. I could never fathom any "space organization" in any of the sci fi books or movies I read or watched as a child being as flaccid as the current NASA is. That includes the socialist Federation of Star Trek. At least the Federation had the impetuous "to boldy go". Split infinitive and all, they were going, NASA has been stalling.

So why the current tirade? NASA release 16-115. NASA Announces First Geostationary Vegetation, Atmospheric Carbon Mission.

What?

NASA has selected a first-of-its-kind Earth science mission that will extend our nation’s lead in measuring key greenhouse gases and vegetation health from space to advance our understanding of Earth’s natural exchanges of carbon between the land, atmosphere and ocean.

Where's the AS of NASA in that? but wait! it gets better...

The primary goals of the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory (GeoCARB), led by Berrien Moore of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, are to monitor plant health and vegetation stress throughout the Americas, and to probe, in unprecedented detail, the natural sources, sinks and exchange processes that control carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane in the atmosphere.

Are there plants in the Amazon jungle stressing out too much, so they are smoking which is affecting their health? And just how are they going to measure "plant stress" levels? have psychiatrists talk to them? No, GeoCARB will measure solar-induced fluorescence, a signal related directly to changes in vegetation photosynthesis and plant stress. Sounds like fuzzy science to me. By that I mean, what will they have to compare their readings against? Are there readings from some UFO of theses solar=induced fluorescence from the industrial revolutionary era that we can assume was the last time plants got really stressed out?

All in all, it sounds like yet one more way some individual can live off the government teat (Total NASA funding for the mission over the next five years will be $166 million, which includes initial development, launch of the mission as a hosted payload on a commercial communications satellite, and data analysis) while making up results which won't have any conclusive results for decades.

[Rocket Babe]

NASA's mission as it currently stands is to lend official believeability to the "sky is falling, water is rising" global warming fanatics. Nothing more. Turns my stomach.

[Joe Wooten]

NASA is just another government bureaucracy. Nothing special about it any more even though it does do some more interesting stuff than other agencies. Too many "administrators" and not enough engineers/techs.

[bernomatic]

In searching for news on how Trump is going to handle NASA, you get a lot of partisan rhetoric, especially from the liberal mindset, whom have since Kennedy, alluded that NASA and Space research are all because of them. Too few seem to recall that National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 which created NASA, was signed into law by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The act was created "so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:"
The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;
The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles;
The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies and living organisms through space;
The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes.
The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere.
The making available to agencies directly concerned with national defenses of discoveries that have military value or significance, and the furnishing by such agencies, to the civilian agency established to direct and control nonmilitary aeronautical and space activities, of information as to discoveries which have value or significance to that agency;
Cooperation by the United States with other nations and groups of nations in work done pursuant to this Act and in the peaceful application of the results, thereof; and
The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment.
In 2012, probably to try and shore up our eroding predominance in space exploration, a ninth objective was added: "The preservation of the United States preeminent position in aeronautics and space through research and technology development related to associated manufacturing processes." Under the Obama administration, our role in space and its exploration had degenerated to us "hitchhiking" to the ISS.
I cannot fully place this blame on the Obama administration, as our ability to "reach for the stars" was hampered from the get-go in the good ole United States. See, the NASA act made changes to the patent laws whereby employee inventions and private contractor innovations brought about by space travel would be subject to government ownership. As can be imagined, this would stifle any free market competition.

[bernomatic]

Got a bit long winded there, and that history of the early space years is deep and twisting.

Anyway, It was hard to find something somewhat neutral regarding the Trump Administrations outlook for NASA, but in this article on UniverseToday.com,

While this meeting (with Al Gore) has led to speculation that Trump’s administration might be softening its stance on environmental issues, many are unconvinced. Based on past statements – which include how Climate Change is a “hoax invented by the Chinese” – to his more recent picks for his cabinet, there are those who continue to express concern for the future of NASA programs that are centered on Earth sciences and the environment.
For instance, after weeks of remaining mute on the subject of NASA’s future, the Trump campaign announced that it had appointed Bob Walker – a former Pennsylvania Congressman and the chair of the House Science Committee from 1995 to 1997. A fierce conservative, Walker was recently quoted as saying that NASA should cease its climate research and focus solely on space exploration.

The article goes on to raise the usual scare tactics regarding raising water levels and even a meteor impact emergency scenario involving FEMA. I find it oddly strange though that a site ostensibly concerned with the universe would be so interested in focusing on the Earth. There is a department of the Federal Government which could under it's current charter much more aptly take care of any Climate Change issues, that being NOAA.
The Earth Science Directorate (sounds like something from Buck Rogers, IIRC) doesn't need to be in NASA and the focus of those at NASA should return to the heavens.

[luke strawwalker]

I agree... The worst thing that ever happened to NASA was all this "Mission to Planet Earth" nonsense (which we can mostly "thank" Sally Ride for... she proposed it as a way for NASA to continue to do "science" missions "on the cheap"-- it's cheaper and easier to launch stuff into LEO or even GEO rather than send probes out across the solar system to other planets, and FAR cheaper than manned missions of whatever type or kind).

Oh, there's a host of sensors (including the aforementioned near infra-red sensors that detect plant florescence and therefore measure photosynthesis and therefore indirectly measure "plant stress" but basically your right-- without a BASELINE of data to establish a "norm", there is NO WAY to extrapolate "trends" in the data, not without DECADES of observations to fall back on. Of course that won't stop the climate fear-mongers from deducing "trends" using very-short span subsets of data, and then pushing for LEGISLATION OR REGULATION to "combat these observed trends" as they see them. Remote sensing is getting to be big business in agriculture-- drones using NIR cameras can be programmed to overfly crop fields weekly and photograph them, so that the data can be use for mapping purposes for applications of materials to the crop (like fertilizer, water, or pesticides) BUT it takes someone ON THE GROUND to go out there and see what's CAUSING the "stress" detected in the photographs... this "GROUND TRUTHING" is the part that is TOTALLY MISSING from NASA's mission as described. Without the "ground truthing" of someone actually going out to determine WHY the crop is "stressed", there's really nothing that can be gained from the photography other than the fact that the "photos indicate the crop is stressed", which is the most you can REALLY say with any "certainty". Unless you know the REASON for the stress (is it insufficient fertilizer, or lack of water or too much water from insufficient drainage, or some soil issue tying up essential nutrients, or soil structure issues like compaction, or disease pressure, or insect pressure, or weed pressure, or some combination of all these factors, or exacerbating or compounding the stress or causing issues??) Until you know, it's really rather pointless, because you cannot make any RELIABLE steps to remedy the situation without knowing the CAUSE of the stress!

What irritates me about this stuff is, it's always for some "great good" that it's launched and the money spent, but it INEVITABLY ends up being used against us as farmers/landowners. The famous "LandSat" program started in the 70's is a perfect example. Following on the heels of "extensive and very promising" experiments in "Earth observation" done aboard Skylab and ASTP in the early 70's, LandSat was promised to "revolutionize" the way we assess and evaluate the utilization of the various lands of the Earth, from industrial sites to farmland to urban sprawl to finding new resources in remote parts of the world difficult to locate by ground. While that "noble reason" justified the mission, and much ado was made about the many benefits obtained from the LandSat imagery, over time it has degenerated into being used as a "farmer spysat" by various corporate interests, some of whom have used LandSat imagery in lawsuits against farmers, from the USDA using Landsat imagery to prosecute farmers for planting fields that were supposed to remain unplanted under government programs, to companies using satellite imagery and nefarious trespassing methods of "ground truthing" to determine that some farmers they sued were using GMO seed technology outside the limits of the grower agreements (they were planting home-grown seed mostly).

This is just the latest example... I can EASILY see the greedy traders and speculators on the floors and trading pits of the CBOT and NY Merc and KCBOT salivating over the chance to get their hands on "up to the minute" data on crop conditions across the Midwest (and other crop growing areas of the US, which is EASILY identifiable due to USDA reporting/crop planting certification data, requiring only basic "mapping" software on the computer to collate the areas "certified planted" crop locations with the satellite imagery showing the current "stress levels" of the crop. Even us lowly farmers can obtain current "growing degree days" and drought mapping and other "stress factors" to aid in our management of our crops and livestock using readily available smart phone apps, and there are even more 'in-depth' paid services available by computer... Anybody who doesn't think that this will INEVITABLY be used to manipulate the markets to the farmer's detriment is living in a dream world...

The other side of the coin is, WHO is interpreting the data, and what is their "ax they have to grind". Of course the tree huggers are going to be seeing "methane plumes" from belching livestock, "soil carbon release" from farm tillage, "CO2 increases" from harvested forages, etc.etc.etc... and of course they'll "demand action", even if the conclusions are "fuzzy" at best. It's going to provide a field day for every nutter with a cause, which is precisely what the libtards want... It won't be realists interpreting the data-- it'll be libtard university types that have NO connection to the real world other than screaming for research dollars for their pet project or stirring up their constituency in the radical professional protestor groups "to action" and causing more trouble, more expense, and more difficulty for the average joe, including the ones expected to "feed 9 billion people by the end of the century" (which will never happen anyway).

NASA-- Not About Space Anymore... very sad. I agree COMPLETELY that *IF* this sort of thing HAS to be done, it should be done by NOAA... NOT NASA. NASA should be about SPACE exploration, the other planets and moons in our solar system, NOT EARTH. We've already got a $100 billion dollar boondoggle up there circling the Earth endlessly, which we cannot even access without "thumbing a ride" at $70 million bucks + per person per flight on the Russian Soyuz-- the ISS... more 'peeing in jars, looking at stars'...

Later! OL J R