Eerie Coincidences in Failure of NASA Climate Monitoring Satellites
Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) and NASA had a bad day late last week. A $424 million satellite named Glory, designed to monitor aerosols and solar irradiance that contribute to changes in climate, failed to be properly delivered to space, when the fairing of the company’s Taurus launch system failed to separate from the payload. The extra mass of the dangling nose cone meant that the propulsion system of the upper stage didn’t have enough oomph (to use the technical term) to get it into orbit, delivering it and its valuable payload instead to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean near Antarctica.
While launch systems have become more reliable over the years, launch failures still happen, and failure to separate critical parts at staging is one of the most common cause of them. Because the Taurus is a four-stage system, it has more opportunities to encounter this failure mode than most vehicles. What is very strange, however, is that this is the second such failure in a row for OSC.
Just a little over two years ago, on February 24th, 2009, a Taurus assigned to deliver the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) met exactly the same fate, and the two lost satellites are probably sitting on the ocean floor not far from each other. After that failure, OSC conducted an investigation to determine its cause. Apparently, that investigation failed as well, because if they had discovered and fixed the problem, it’s unlikely it would have happened again on Friday.
It’s worth pointing out that the Taurus doesn’t fly very much. There have only been four flight attempts in the past decade: three of them were failures, including the last two consecutive disasters already described. When you only do something every two and a half years on average, it’s easy to get things wrong from lack of practice. There’s an optimal “tempo” for launch operations. Try to do things too fast, or too slowly, and the odds of failure can go up dramatically (one of the many reasons why proposals to continue to fly the Shuttle, but at only a couple flights a year, are a bad idea).
But there’s something else funny going on here, and not in the holding-your-sides-with-laughter sense, that could create fodder for the conspiracy minded. Both OCO and Glory were specifically designed to help resolve the controversial issue of the degree to which earth’s climate is changing and if so, the degree to which human actions are the cause. NASA has been one of the many agencies criticized in the wake of the Climaquiddick scandal of late 2009 for fudging data, such as throwing out results from Siberian temperature monitoring stations, and generally massaging things in a way that somehow always seemed to confirm the politically correct AGW theory.
…or, alternatively, the successful launch of this satellite could conclusively prove the connection between global warming and carbon levels. Something the (remarkably rich – if you want to bring bribery into the equation) oil companies would be reluctant to see happen.
Please, why are liberals so clueless of how corporations work? “Big Oil” already has its bases covered, they’re just fine with AGW legislation, or haven’t you been paying attention?
I agree with eon. If this launch system has a 75% failure rate and at least two-thirds of the failures have an identical cause (this article doesn’t give information on the third failure), then there doesn’t seem much reason to blame the payload.
Have you been living in a cave these past few years. AGW legislation by Congress is dead. “Big oil” doesn’t have to do anything. And “they have their bases covered”. Some were even contributing $$ to green groups against AGW and buying into green tecnology. Oil companies don’t care whether the price of oil goes up and demand comes down. They will still make their profit. You really are “clueless of how corporations work”.
NASA already have a satellite called Aqua that has been disproving AGW for several years now.
Infact – ALL of the scientifically measured data disproves AGW
1) sea level rise is the same as it has been for centuries – there is no increas
2) sea ice GLOBALLY is increasing. The artic is decreasing, the antarctive is increasing. Globally the total is increasing.
3) global temperature in Jan/Feb is 0.2 degrees BELOW the 100 year average. There is no rise in global average temperature.
Every single bit of actual MEASURED data disproves AGW. So it doesnt take a genius to realise these satelites would have continued that trend…..
I blame Henry Waxman’s nostrils.
I think he ought to be impeached or recalled just for his grotesque appearance!
WHile we are on the subject of coincidences at an Air Force base, why the heck are they launching a weather satellite at Vandenberg? So it can have a polar orbit?
Or put it this way, why would “they” want everyone to think that a satellite launched under secure conditions onto a high inclination orbit is at the bottom of the Pacific and not on station?
I’m just saying.
X Contra, having worked at Vandenberg AFB and in the meteorological section, the overwhelming reason the launch area is where it is for safety reasons in case of rocket failure, as evidenced by the 3 recent failed launches.
Lockheed Martin has a HUGE stake in the matter, for their software and sometimes payloads are involved/aboard these launches. I haven’t looked at their stocks following these hiccups but admittedly am curious..
Secondly, the differing types of rockets and their respective payloads follow a glide path West over the Pacific Ocean whereas ~5-10 minutes after launch the monitoring of the rocket’s glide path/functions is handed over to personnel at Kwajelein Station in the South Pacific/Marshall Islands.
Mr. Simberg, as others have mentioned, the launch failure in Oz wasn’t mentioned in your article.
Back in the 1940s, British West Indian Airways lost two identical Avro Tudor IV airliners (a commercial development of the wartime Lancaster bomber), the “Star Tiger” and “Star Ariel”, within a year of each other on the same route (London to Bermuda). Both disappeared without a trace, in similar weather, apparently within 200 miles and about one hour’s flight time of their destination. No wreckage, etc., was ever found in either case.
The Star Tiger and Star Ariel disappearances were a big part of the evolution of the “Bermuda Triangle” myth, along with the loss of the U.S. Navy’s “Flight 19″ of TBM Avengers in 1945. (Yes, aliens have been blamed for the loss of the airliners, too.)
The British Air Ministry had a more pragmatic response than blaming E.T. After the second loss, while they still could find nothing mechanically “wrong” with remaining Tudor IVs, they withdrew the type’s Certificate of Airworthiness for commercial use. No Tudor IV ever carried passengers for a British flag carrier again.
The fact that two “environmental” satellites had failures that may be propitious for the deep-eco crowd is, IMHO, less relevant than the fact that two identical launch vehicles apparently suffered the same fatal fault. It tells me that there’s a fundamental flaw in that launch vehicle, and that the best solution is to stop using it. Period.
Of course, those who are obsessed with turning out the lights on Western civilization by any means necessary are probably relieved that those satellites won’t be delivering any data that would contradict their claims of “global warming”, too.
If data cannot be “explained away”, it’s better that there is no data at all, in their (enlightened) estimation.
clear ether
eon
The fairing jettison mechanism was completely redesigned after the OCO failure, so it’s not a common cause failure and commenter eon’s rationale for discontinuing Taurus is unsupported by reality.
I have friends who work on Taurus and Pegasus at OSC, and the idea that anyone there would or could sabotage a mission is laughable. The security environment at VAFB is beyond belief – take one step outside an authorized area and you will find yourself face down in the dirt with an M-16 pointed at your head. No one can simply wander into the LC and access the vehicle unsupervised.
NASA does not handle the payload processing or conduct launch operations. They contract with OSC for services and make go/no-go decisions. Conspiracy fans have been watching too many bad movies.
What “probably” happened:
1. Launch Failed.
2. Investigation misdiagnosed problem.
3. Working part replaced with new working part.
4. Failed part failed again.
What will happen is:
1. New Investigation
2. New part will replace old part which may/may not have failed.
Anyone who sends up a NASA payload on a Taurus before there is 1 fully functional test flight is irresponsible and should be demoted or retired.
Taurus has a 25 percent chance of getting a payload into orbit. Its cost is $20 million in 1999 dollars (call it $30 million).
The satellite cost $424 million, lets say the launched cost is half a billion.
If a launcher had been used like the Delta II that has had 75 consecutive successful launches (and costs $40-50 billion) the launched cost would be $520 billion and the satellite would be in orbit.
Using the Taurus is pennywise and pound foolish.
“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence”
Exactly. Having worked at NASA in the 60-70′s I often wonder what the heck happened to the terrific collection of scientists represented there at that time.
Maybe they became too politicized.
Claudia,
That one is easy… Jimmy Carter.
As part of the combating of ‘malaise’, Carter choose to freeze the salaries of Federal workers as an inspiration to the private sector; however, Congress did not freeze the twice-a-year (at that time) Cost of Living Adjustments for Federal retires.
My best friend’s Father was a PhD at Langley Research Center, and he said that really, he could not afford to continue working, when his retirement income would catch up in 2-3 years. I guess that since he was able to teach Mechanical Engineering at ODU, he also had a ‘hobby’ to keep him busy.
well, considering the statist push on their versions of math and science (which essentially means “anti” math and “anti”science) over the last 50 years the new breed has trouble with reality when it interferes with their manipulative tactics
also, nasa is now a muslim outreach arm
Simon’s Law:
It is unwise to attribute to malice alone that which can be attributed to malice and stupidity.
Tolbert you are correct it is Obama’s fault!
Wasn’t NASA one of the first organizations to jump onto the “Global Warming” bandwagon? So I guess it wouldn’t look goog to have some of their own equipment prove that they were wrong all along. Still, I think this is more due to bureaucratic incompetance rather than some plot on the part of NASA. But you never know in our Federal Government. These are the same people who swore, just swore, that Saddam Hussein had WMDs in Iraq prior to the Second Gulf War. Weren’t NASA satellites used to “confirm” that, too?
Saddam Hussein did have stocks of WMD materials, especially chemical weapons as discovered not only in buried caches found from 2004-2007, but also in the camps of Ansar al-Islam, where the ricin bore the chemical footprints of Saddam’s labs. He also had the expertise and designs etc. with which to rapidly ramp up a nuclear WMD program, but had not gone into manufacturing due to international sactions.
Oh geez…more rewriting of history. All they ever found in Iraq were old artillery shell casings that once had held chemical weapons. But since the actual chemicals had been destroyed, all that was left were the casings.
On the other hand, a simple explanation is that someone cut corners to save money, and it bit them twice. Which goes quite well with the general level of “science” associated with climate change research these days.
I’m more surprised that they didn’t just make a simulation of a rocket launch. “The computer model says it’s in orbit and gathering data, so it’s a success!”
Great sarcasm. Har-har-har.
+1000
“…why the heck are they launching a weather satellite at Vandenberg? So it can have a polar orbit? ”
Yep. Global coverage.
“These are the same people who swore, just swore, that Saddam Hussein had WMDs in Iraq prior to the Second Gulf War. Weren’t NASA satellites used to “confirm” that, too?”
Nope. NASA is purely civilian space.
Yes, but while NASA has its contract with the government, it has a monopoly in the services that it provides to the government. Not quite civilian.
Incorrect.
I’m thinking a tube of superglue would do it. I can’t imagine that it would ever be detected. I’m sure NASA is full of AGW cultist.
Here at the Grissom Exploding Bolt & Test Capsule Center, we’d like to point out that it’s possible to sabotage components before they arrive at an Air Force facility. Just. Saying.
Also? There are now two clusters of rare-earth compounds and questionable power sources littering the floor of the Antarctic Sea — or so they say. Two long trails of (admittedly, partial) disruption to the ozone layer. Two clouds of toxic propellants wafting eastward from The Coast. When will the environmental depredation end? Does NASA bear no accountability for all the trash they’re dumping on our planet? Because if a private company did that, you know what NASA would say.
I like the cut of your jib.
I suspect the failure is probably incompetence. But, if it is sabotage; it certainly could have happened far away from the pad. In addition, due to their nature of being destructive (if fully tested), flight pyros are only fully tested once. Pyros are standardized and have their own set of security for all sorts of reasons. Still, they could be modified to fail before they reached the pad and installed properly by competent and trusted workers. Then again, I’ve personally seen a bad pyro firing harness installation that was accepted for flight. The reason? It was good enough and saved costs. In that case, it was good enough, but steps were taken to prevent that level of installation in the future.
Back to what I suspect happened; it doesn’t really take direct sabotage. Lack of enthusiasm for a project will mean little oversight. For something as sensitive as an unmanned space launch; little oversight can lead to spectacular disasters.
The first Taurus fairing failure used pyros. This was redesigned to use a pneumatic system with a sizable flight history for the most recent flight. That also failed. Presumably, this means that the failure was *not* in fact the fairing separation system, but something else less obvious.
The conspiracy theory is a bit nuts here. The Taurus has failed 2 out of 3 times before. It’s not exactly *unexpected* that it fail again. It would be more surprising if the flight had been successful.
Why must we assume somebody that was paid to sabotage this launch vehicle? Why not just assume a true believer instead? One who was afraid that these satellites might actually paint a more realistic picture of what’s going on up there? It’s much cheaper, and it’s consistent with the mindsent that delivered “Climaquiddick” to us.
Never ascribe to ignorance that what could be explained by arrogant pride.
#7 has probably gotten it right. They’ve failed to account for murphy in their computer models. Same thing with so many failures. As for Global Warming or Climate Change, a true scientist would love to be proven wrong either way. The true scientist’s only real interest is learning how it works and if they are found to be wrong, they learn a lot more than if they are right. I personally believe Global Warming is a hoax, and unprovable either way and that most, if not all, changes in the weather can be accounted for in changes in the output of the sun, it is a variable star to about 4 percent, which would make a huge impact on our climate. Remember the Skylab… Supposedly in a 1000 year orbit. Was brought down because increased solar radiation caused our atmosphere to expand and increase drag on Skylab bringing it down early. Yeah we had a space station already, and we let it fall back to earth and now we have a fancy new one. What a waste of money.
Micheal Mann still trying to hide the decline.
Here we go again, the same old “watch this hand not what the other one is doing game”.
I’ve said this before, get informed.
A must watch credible video presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij8Iwjd1UiI
Only getting to the 2nd sentence what caught my eye and got me fired up were the words “designed to monitor aerosols and solar irradiance”. It’s entirely plausible that millions upon millions would be intentionally wasted to cover their global warming scam. Equally plausible is that someone would passionately hope to draw attention to the ongoing geo engineering and weather modification programs without regard for humanity or our environment. Hey, there’s big money to be made with the global warming and diverting weather scams.
All one has to do is look up at our once beautiful blue skies which are constantly shrouded in a toxic, chemical laden milky haze to fully appreciate the lengths they’ll go to advance their hypocritical and misguided agendas. Look up, pay attention.
Just watch the big tanker jets accomplish daily aerosol spraying of the blue skies all across our country. It’s an amazing show to watch, grid patterns, loops and designs with persistent contrails that expand and plume out into the most unnatural skies and chemical laden cloud cover. It’s been stepped up, perhaps they hope to quickly replace what we consider normal and unnatural with abnormal and very unnatural.
Who is financing this? Taxpayers? Another bad joke on us?
WHERE ARE OUR CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS?
If americans only knew, I don’t believe they would get behind the military and federal government’s secretive attempts to play God at humanities expense. It needs to stop. Not many of us are ok with aluminum, barium,arsenic, lead,sulphur, manganese,saltwater etc. raining on our heads, crops and water supplies.
Time to up the foil headgear.
Doesn’t any one care about neutrons? They don’t rain, they crash.
In order to have a successful launch we need three ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’ scientists on board so they can peer-review the computer data,
and make in flight model changes that will work!
-
Oh..
I forgot about the conspiracy theory.
The day after the unsuccessful launch I heard that Dick Cheney had been duck hunting in that area.
The Muslims sabotaged both flights because NASA was not following Obama’s directive to “reach out to the Muslim world” enough.
We have space ships?
If muslim outreach is going to the highest priority, one has to accept the fact that these failures are going to happen.
If you take your eye off the ball, you’re gonna fumble it few times.
Why is anybody surprised?
insallah
Mind you, Jimmy Hanson’s “NASA” GISS has very little connection save the brand name to the shoot-stuff-into-space parts of NASA.
Who took the decision to use the Taurus for both of these satellites? When was that decision taken? Was it after the september 21 2001 failed launch?
A I recall, NASA’s top priority is Muslim Outreach.
Why they are messing with rockets and satellites is a complete mystery.
This kind of subtle sabotage needn’t even have been performed by someone who has a personal or family connection to a climate-hysteria group, or a direct financial interest in a company that relies on climate hysteria for its profits. It’s only necessary that one person in a position to do harm to any critical component have conscious or subconscious sympathies for the irrational Earth-worship crowd.
Given the fact that NASA has been “fudging the data” on AGW, I’m not sure I trust them any more to conduct research like this anyway. ALL raw data retrieved requires interpretation by humans to make it meanigful, and thats the loophole that NASA or any other politically compromised organization exploits to cook the books to deliver the desired outcome. I do not believe it’s possible to “take human judgement out of the monitoring and modeling loop”. We must rely on ethical and expert scientists to handle data properly. Recently, NASA has been negligent in this regard. Perhaps this indicates a fatal flaw in NASA as much as anything else.
But maybe I’m being too harsh. It’s not like there are other things monstrously wrong with this once wonderful agency. And hey! These launch disasters seem like a good opportunity to continue that Muslim outreach scheme which is NASA’s top priority according to it’s director. These failed launches provide a great opportunity to learn from the brilliant Muslims and their vast store of knowledge on rocket science.
Thanks for using the “-quiddick” suffix. Left wing scandals should reference other left wing scandals.
And yet Glenn Beck is a crazy conspiracy theorist for pointing out links between the Left and fundamentalist Islamists. Rocket science is, well, rocket science. Heck when your billion dollar Mars probe fails because someone forgot to convert English into metric, you don’t need any sabotage, whether for ideology or money to explain that a new rocket system has failed 3 out of the first 4 times. Poor design or poor execution.
It’s G*d’s way of telling them “you’re barking up the wrong tree”
Oh, wait… Marxist/Progressives don’t believe in G*d,
Never mind.
The solution to questionable conduct, in the hard sciences, is limited to one of only three options. You can be correct. You can be dumb. You can be a liar. NASA has been incorrect, two out of two times. What is their problem? Where do we go?
This documentation of wide spread distrust of the climate change science, while not conclusive, is indicative. This field of science has degraded our societal trust, not in the certain of the results, but in the integrity of the researchers. It takes a rocket failure out of the realm of technology, and into the realm of criminal conduct. That is different.
Congressman Waxman, a powerful Democratic Congressman, said yesterday that those who deny the bad man-made effects of climate change are anti science. He is responsible for spending billions of taxpayer money on this science. This is the difference. Scientists live and die by learning something new and useful. They are not largely motivated by money. But we live in an age, in which wealthy people survive by holding one position on scientific arguments. If they are exposed as wrong, their rice bowl breaks.
I do not trust Congressman Waxman on climate change science. I think some high level executives in NASA must lose their careers. We have lost a decade and a billion dollars, and there must be consequences for this poor performance.
Major Hassan; Fort Hood. His attitude of ‘war against USA’ was no secret –but his PC shield was strong enough to intimidate those who 20 years ago would’ve swift-kicked him out of the service long before he got around to deciding to shoot up that roomful of soldiers.
Surely a Major Hassan could get near the launch vehicles or components of.
PC is just so enormously damaging, it’s almost designed to run (or should i say slither) amok in govt bureaucracies.
Gary 7 strikes again I see.
When will this nation wake up to the fact that aliens with powerful transporter technology are secretly tampering with our rockets!? Damn it, Sheeple! WAKE UP!
Somebody go grab Teri Garr and waterboard her quick before the cat gets to her!
It can only be attributable to human error.
I saw Al Gore hanging around the launch site just before liftoff . . . no, really, it was him . . . he’s so fat now, it’s impossible for him to hide.
Despite all the noise and pomp, I think the fact that NASA used these two satellites on what were essentially R&D prototype rockets is a ringing endorsement of how important AGW is to the country. I actually am okay with this – I for one think that supporting the development of new space launch capabilities bears far more weight on our future as a country and a species than studying AGW, although I’ll admit the latter is important.
This is a big loss for all of us. However, if it leads to better rockets either by retiring existing technical issues or by causing market forces to bear against an unreliable provider, then I’d say “it is what it is,” and move on. And the idea of sabotage is kind of silly.
Just a note…
The OSC is not “NASA”. They are a private firm that is one of the mainstays of private spacelift. If they wanted to, they could launch out of Russia, French Guiana, etc… they just drop a check and borrow the equipment/placement. NASA probably had very little to do with launch whatsoever.
They use Vandenberg, but it’s more of a “lease” of the faculity than anything. The FAA provides the flight approval, and the Air Force is the primary agency responsible for tracking ALL space operations, government or private, in the US. In fact, most other nations will notify the US Air Force of launches and plans for deconfliction and tracking purposes.
Operation of the payload/bus is provided by the satellite owner.
I think a conspiracy of saboteurs is a stretch. More likely explanation is crappy workmanship, cutting corners, and what you get when you farm jobs out to the lowest bidder.
What we should be doing is building weapons platforms in space to rain hell on our enemies, but that’s another issue.
“…All it takes to prevent a separation is to go up on the gantry after launch processing has been completed and add something to bind the fairing to the stage…”
This sounds pretty far-fetched, even for Agent 007. I can’t imagine someone being able to sabotage a missile on the launch pad without being observed by video monitors.
Anyone ever heard of quick set epoxy?
There are a whole bunch of easily applied resins that could have been squirted into the cover joints – some of them with thousands of pounds of structural integrity – that could have been applied from 10 minutes to 24 hours from launch that would have done the job.
Sometimes the cowboys and the bandits are just the same people wearing different clothes.
Like the bankers and the regulators.
The company would not necessarily have not wanted the satellite to fail. In fact a company cannot “want” anything. It is only a legal entity and it’s reality is a group of people. Perhaps some people can have different agendas?
I’m with Rush.. although he was just supposing.. that maybe just maybe they don’t want a satellite to go up because the collected date just might prove them to be what they are.. scam artists.. yeah, I’ll go with that.. if there’s sabotage.. it’s them doing the sabotaging…
Plenty of other private space launch companies out there;
If an ‘Angel’ funds one of them to build and launch
substitute satellites, and NASA says ‘No Way’
it is time to worry about sabotage.
I don’t believe these launches will be considered failures by the climate scientists as the data being sent from the bottom of the ocean will be about as effective as the data that would have been sent from orbit.
While I enjoy this website immensely (but have never contributed to comments) this article is basically CRAP!! The rambling contained within this article undermine the legitimate comments and commentary from others.
There is ZERO evidence for the suggestions / allegations. Your opposition will feast on this article as a sign of your madness / extreme paranoid delusions.
Would suggest the editor intervene promptly.
Vandenberg is a better launch site for polar orbits. Period. Security is also perfect. And to the earlier poster who said the sabotage could have been done outside of VAB – you know nothing of satellite launch ops or preparations thereof.
Terrible launch vehicle – 4 stages (although it was a fairing issue).
Taurus cost is closer to $40M where a Delta light configuration would be around $65M. OSC has very good congressional resources, ergo, probability of launch failure is not the only consideration…
Just askin’ couldnt you cause a failure with the software?
Yes, you could. It would require the lack of command to separate the fairing. If this were true, it would be found by the Accident Investigation Board.
I wish I could give you some more facts (I am prohibited by law), but NASA goes out of its way to ensure these earth science missions with ‘climate change’ investigations are selected…
I believe Mr. Simberg believes the possibility of sabotage of the two NASA/OSC launches is pure conjecture and difficult because of the security. However because of the high stakes of Cap and Trade, etc., fortunes to be made, and the desire for scientific prestige for a most vocal NASA scientist, he brought up the possibility.
While I don’t see a need to consider possible sabotage further, there is important information in this post that should be emphasized, and is pertinent to the anthropogenic-climate-change-theory discussion, which will be ongoing for some time.
Glory and Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) were mentioned as the two satellites that were designed to acquire data pertinent to understanding the science of the Earth’s climate and the following statement was made. “These two satellites were designed to take human judgement out of the monitoring and modeling loop, to provide direct and unbiased global sensor data on things such as carbon levels, clouds, irradiation, and other factors that are crucial to understanding the planet’s climate and its variability.”
This is what Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt, MD is responsible for, building, operating and collecting satellite derived data of the atmosphere and placing it into a data base accessible by all scientists. It is the way real atmosphere science can be proven, or dis-proven and this work needs to continue, starting with finding and correcting the launch problems, or changing launch vehicles.
If it turns out, as it now appears, that the current Administration has eliminated NASA manned space initiatives, at the least these atmosphere science programs should be continued since the questions are still pertinent and the comparative cost is minimal. However agreement should also be reached that no political action should be taken until science has been settled and verified from data available to all scientists, that provides consistent results over a number of years.
An alternative view of this failure is that all those private companies that claim they can launch satellites better and cheaper than NASA are now learning why it costs NASA enormous amounts of money to get a satellite into space. NASA has a lot of experience in launching space vehicles in it’s engineering staff that doesn’t appear to have made it’s way into those “cheaper and more efficient” private companies. And since this was a taxpayer funded satellite, those companies are learning how hard it is – all over again – at taxpayer expense. Oh well.
It’s going to get really nasty when private companies start learning about the difficulties of launching people into space and recovering them – alive. Then, perhaps, we’ll understand why NASA costs so damn much. Possibly too much.
Seems to me as if it’s gods way of telling the idiots the jig is up.
Im sure they will continue to launch satellites.
Whether it’s a manager’s fault or not, it’s a manager’s fault. That’s why they’re called managers.
I don’t want to say Al Gore is fat, but he tried hiding behind Chris Christie and it didn’t work at all!
Lots of possible reasons, but I really like Divine Intervention.
Insurance fraud sounds like fun, too.
I also like substandard equipment/materials.
Probably best is Peter Principle. Someone’s pay grade is above him.
You mean kinda like our current president?
Sabotaging a missile launch because it might provide data disproving global warming assumes the people who believe in global warming care about data. They don’t need data. They believe.
I’m old enough to remember the global cooling scare in the 1970′s. The three TV networks and articles in the major newsweeklies warned of more frequent and more violent storms, famine, species extinction. Alarmists said with a straight face we had only a few years to act before it was too late. Those who doubted were mocked and called deniers.
It’s a drag getting old because after a while, you’ve seen it all before.
This is just part of Obama’s dismantling our space program.
Now that Discovery is grounded Russia and China have complete control of our military and civilian satellites
Big Oil will not suffer from carbon regulation. The world will not consume less oil. The oil will simply be taxed in addition to being price leveraged. But this sounds like an ordinary technical failure to me. No reason to worry about refuting AGW — that happened a long time ago and didn’t slow down old Al Gore and his petro-ponzi buddies. Q: is Al Gore’s head a fossil fuel?
Living proof God has a sarcastic sense of humor.
I’m sure the rocket scientist didn’t account for the “extra” C02 in the air between the time the rocket was built and launched.
I suspect it is the work of…
The New Totalitarians’ Marxist Sheeple Revolucion!
Motto: We brought it all down, man! Now what?
Logo: An eco-friendly hemp sandal stepping on a human face, forever.
All things serve Algore.
While all the coincidences are interesting. The simplest answer in cases like this is usually correct. Bet on incompetence.