There Goes The Sun?

That's the question I ask in this week's Fox News column.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102318,00.html

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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Rand Simberg wrote:

That's the question I ask in this week's Fox News column.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102318,00.html


You seem to think that our understanding of the sun is based on
our observation of the sun in the past few decades. We have much
better information about the sun then that. It is a main sequence
yellow star. We have observed many of those. They are somewhat
predictable.

As for letting private enterprise take care of monitoring solar
weather I think it would work fine. For the more important
terrestrial weather you also mention, I know it can work. My
father was offered a job by a private weather company here
in Canada 20 years ago. He didn't take the permanent job offered,
only a small contract, but as far as I know the company is
still in business.

Alain Fournier

Rand Simberg wrote:

That's the question I ask in this week's Fox News column.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102318,00.html


Tomorrow's leadign story on CNN:
"Sun has unprecedented solar activity: women, minorites and children hit
the hardest. Bush's tax cuts believed to be to blame."

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 16:11:09 -0800 (PST), h
(Rand Simberg) wrote:

That's the question I ask in this week's Fox News column.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102318,00.html

To respond:

Re terrestrial weather, the issue becomes one of the public
interest. It can literally be a matter of life and death; Forcing
people to pay to stay alive is...a bad idea.

Re space weather, a thought comes up: maybe it could be like the
Postal Service? Run by government, funded by everybody?

Realistically, though: C'mon...$8M? That's PENNIES to government.
WHY privatize something that cheap?

John

"John Penta" wrote ...
On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 16:11:09 -0800 (PST), h
(Rand Simberg) wrote:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102318,00.html

I usually don't bother with those columns, but as it provoked an
interesting response I took a look and was pleasantly surprised
by the /relative/ lack of preaching. I'd say "Keep it up." but I'm
not that optimistic.

To respond:

Re terrestrial weather, the issue becomes one of the public
interest. It can literally be a matter of life and death; Forcing
people to pay to stay alive is...a bad idea.

Yeah, yeah but it's done all the time. (I'm tempted to say "particularly
in America" but that's not the worst country.)

However I think terrestrial weather is much like roads & rail.
Required infrastructure which /needs/ government funding one way or
another. It could be privatised to some extent but its not likely to
make enough money from paying (non-governmental) customers
without major disruptions to existing usage.

Re space weather, a thought comes up: maybe it could be like the
Postal Service? Run by government, funded by everybody?

Realistically, though: C'mon...$8M? That's PENNIES to government.
WHY privatize something that cheap?

Anything which can be run reliably by company(ies) at a profit without
provoking significant disruption to the economy is a potential candidate
for privatisation. The amount isn't really significant.

I would be opposed to any replacement to the present space weather
center that would make the information more restricted than it presently
is for the general public, scientific and amateur satellites. However
I would have thought some combination of funding from commercial
satellite operators and / or commercialized 'value added services' could
be arranged.

If nothing else the space insurance industry would not be happy about
the center's disappearance and if they're not happy premiums go up and
if premiums go up satellite owners aren't going to be happy.

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
That's the question I ask in this week's Fox News column.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102318,00.html


1. The "End of the World" group now has new life - after the Y2K
non-events.

2. Just in time for those federal cuts in solar observations - so that we
won't know - when "the big one" does happen - see # 1.

3. Further proof that like the "random walk" theory for financial markets -
the sun is being manipulated - see # 1.

GB

Realistically, though: C'mon...$8M? That's PENNIES to government. WHY
privatize something that cheap?

The bigger question is whether privatization would work, or whether it
would be another Landsat [1] or SeaWiFS [2].

As for dollars, the big item is not the $8 million, but replacing SOHO
which is well beyond its design life and which has been having various
failures. Plus whatever future satellites or other sensors are
desired.

Here are some links on how vital SOHO is and plans for a replacement,
currently planned to take at least 5 years:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ue_030619.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...re_030717.html
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

[1] For example, search for "privatize" in
http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame...at/landsat.htm or
http://www.islandone.org/SpencerAvLe...ek-911028.html

[2] Planned as a Seasat replacement, eventually succeeded but
poorly done privatization meant it took some 15 years or so.

On Fri, 7 Nov 2003 02:44:37 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
John Penta made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

Re terrestrial weather, the issue becomes one of the public
interest. It can literally be a matter of life and death; Forcing
people to pay to stay alive is...a bad idea.

So we should give everyone free food?

Anyway, they don't have to pay. All they have to do is put up with
commercials on the evening weather report.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers: