Air Force Space Fence Being Shut Down 86
New submitter meglon writes "NASA will lose access to important real-time information on tracking orbital debris if the order of Gen. William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, is carried out. The Space Fence, the only monitoring system of its kind, will cease to function on October 1st. 'Deployed in the 1960s, the VHF Space Fence includes three transmitter sites and six receiving stations. It is responsible for approximately 40 percent of all observations performed by the Air Force-run Space Surveillance Network, which includes other ground-and space-based sensor assets, said Brian Weeden, technical adviser at the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to space sustainability. ... A full-scale development contract for an updated version of the Space Fence had been expected in 2012 or early 2013, but on July 16, Shelton said the multibillion-dollar project is being held up due to a wide-ranging Pentagon review that includes major acquisition programs. The review is examining scenarios under which the Pentagon’s budget is cut by $150 billion, $250 billion and $500 billion during the next decade.'"
Another example of what government is for. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly the sort of thing government is for. It's not like I can set up a radar transmitter in my back yard and sell the data on the open market. I'm not allowed to use that spectrum, and it's blindingly obvious that if I were, so would everybody else, and the spectrum would rapidly become useless to everybody.
What's the alternative? Sell it to SpaceX? Then make NASA buy access to the data? And Lockheed. And Boeing. And Raytheon. And Virgin Galactic. And Blue Origin.
But we all know it wouldn't go that way. Lockheed or Boeing would lobby successfully to get to buy it, then charge everybody else on the list for access to the data. And refuse to sell data to SpaceX at all.
Three transmitters and six receivers costing billions is more than a little absurd, but the job does need doing, and needs doing in a fashion that doesn't set up a wholly inappropriate profit motive and an even more inappropriate opportunity to be anti-competitive. Having said that... Who runs those stations now? Wanna bet it's already Lockheed or Boeing or Raytheon? That'd be why it costs billions instead of the tens of millions it should cost. The wholly inappropriate cost-plus contract with profit motive is already in place. Now all we need is the anti-competitiveness to go with it.