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Space

ESA Cryosat Launch Reported Failure 277

Posted by Zonk from the cold-reception dept.
hptux06 writes "Earlier today the ESA lauched their "Cryosat" satellite, designed to monitor ice levels across the Arctic/Antarctic. It's being reported a failure, disappearing 90 minutes after the launch. It cost £90M (160M US$) to build, and was supposed to spend three years determining the effects of global warming." From the article: "The satellite rode into space on a Rockot vehicle, a converted SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile. The rocket, which in the Cold War would have been armed with nuclear weapons, had been modified for peaceful space duties with the addition of a Breeze-KM upper stage. Dr Matthias Oehm, chief executive officer of Eurockot, said they had not received the expected signals from either the spacecraft or the upper stage of the rocket that should have injected it into orbit. "
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ESA Cryosat Launch Reported Failure More

ESA Cryosat Launch Reported Failure

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  • By the time... (Score:5, Funny)

    by squoozer ( 730327 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @04:29PM (#13747919)

    ...they get a replacement up there won't be any ice left to study.

  • It's a conspiracy... (Score:3, Funny)

    by fragmentate ( 908035 ) * <jdspilled.gmail@com> on Saturday October 08, 2005 @04:29PM (#13747920) Journal
    HEADLINE: Cryosat ($160M) Disappears 90-Min. After Launch

    Today, Environmentalists revealed their opinions of what occurred to the Cryosat satellite. They are confident that they now know, and can reproduce the conditions that led to the disappearance of Cryosat. Apparently global warming is to blame. The ship burned up from all of the friction caused by the particulates released by the refineries, and most modern conveniences. However, there is speculation that they were aiming for the hole in the ozone layer, and due to shrinkage of the hole it simply did not fit. Ed Begley Jr. was unavailable for comment. Mecha-Streisand will be called in to conduct the search for the wreckage, if any of it did not disintegrate in the acid layers of the atmosphere created by CFCs.

    When questioned about the emissions of the satellite itself, an environmentalist spokesperson had this to say, "We are but a small segment of the population, we don't pollute as much as everyone else because there are so few of us. So, with all that pollutions savings we felt entitled to a bit of smog creation."

    Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan postulated that this was all probably President Bush's fault.


    Will I get troll-modded again?

  • Global Warming Myth (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 08, 2005 @04:30PM (#13747923)
    It was a waste of money anyway. Global Warming is a crock invented by anti-capitalist socialist marxist liberals to deter America's economic success and progress in the world.
    • Ah ah ah. Slashdot crowd and I, really appreciate this kind of smart sarcasms, too bad you post it anonymously, you could have make progress toward an excellent karma !

      • Re:Global Warming Myth (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        gaining karma == appealing to Slashdot liberal groupthink.

        No thanks. I will take freedom of inquiry over appealing to the crowd any day.
      • Nah... Funny mods don't count toward karma.

        Which I find a bit annoying, because most of my most insightful comments come in the form of sarcasm.

        Oh well. Nobody likes a karma whore.

    • Re:Global Warming Myth (Score:4, Insightful)

      by interiot ( 50685 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @04:55PM (#13748032) Homepage
      Other countries [wikipedia.org] are going ahead with the Kyoto Protocol [wikipedia.org], so America's economic success isn't realy part of it. And there is lots of lots of data [wikipedia.org] that points towards human-induced global warming, it's pretty hard to deny anymore.
      • But China and India aren't part of the Kyoto Protocol. It's a flawed model, actually, trying to address the future while only looking at the past. China and India will far surpass the US in eco-spewing in the next 20 or so years.
        • So is the standard of US behavior now essentially "If China and India won't do it, then neither will we"? When did our standards become so low as to play by these kinds of childish rules? What happened to doing things solely because they're the right thing to do, and also to lead by example?
          • Nothing happened to it..because the fairy tale history of an altruistic United States you seem to pine for never existed. Except maybe in the history they teach kindergarteners. America is good, Washington never told a lie...blah blah blah.

            Try looking at a history book once. Nation-states have never done anything simply because it was the right thing to do and they wanted to lead by example. Nation-states do thing because their government feels it is in their best interest. Now, that may in fact coincide w
            • Hey, hold on. I don't think I ever said that the history of the US was peachy-keen; quite the opposite of course. I agree with pretty much everything you said. But I would think that the US has slowly at least moved towards doing some thing in its history precisely because they were the right things to do. Certainly most things have multiple reasons (i.e. a lot of the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement). And I'd certainly hope that just because the US has a crummy history on a lot of issues wo

  • Bummer (Score:5, Funny)

    by courtarro ( 786894 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @04:32PM (#13747930) Homepage
    I know it's off topic, but does anyone know why it's raining little bits of metal? I just raked the yard ...
    • Put them on ebay, and pay someone to rake it for you.
      • No shit. Space debris, or anything punctured by it, is extremely valuable. Don't ask me why, but there are collectors who will pay good money for it. If you go out to start your car, and there's a weird vertical hole drilled straight through it, do not get it repaired!

  • We know that Bush wasn't behind this... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Will_Malverson ( 105796 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @04:34PM (#13747939) Journal
    I was going to post about how the rocket was probably shot down by the United States, to prevent global warming information from getting out, but then I remembered that shooting down a rocket is impossible.
    • Not impossible but shooting the right rocket down might just tax some of the more trigger happy brains ;)

    • I was going to post about how the rocket was probably shot down by the United States, to prevent global warming information from getting out, but then I remembered that shooting down a rocket is impossible.



      So, it was HAARP

    • Re:We know that Bush wasn't behind this... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:55PM (#13748282)
      In unrelated news, the Pentagon announced that its much critisized anti-ballistic missile system has achieved its first successful test shootdown today. Whitehouse officials rejoiced at the success, heralding it as a sign that the interests of the United States are now even more secure. An unnamed Whitehouse employee and former oil company lobbyist said, "See, all those millions of dollars finally paid off!"

      It's funny, laugh!
  • With the Cosmos I disaster and now this, should we really be using ICBMs to launch satellites? These rockets don't seem to be bringing them to orbit...
    • ... should we really be using ICBMs to launch satellites?

      Why not? It'll be a lot worse if they were being used to deliver nuclear warheads and the warheads "disappeared" in mid-flight. Scrap metal wouldn't be the only thing raining down.
    • At any rate, when you see a headline like $150 million down the drain, it makes you wonder how much more it costs to create two of these things versus one of them. I mean, I imagine a lot more is spent on design than physical parts and assembly. What percentage of the cost is in the launch?

  • Failure (Score:3, Funny)

    by r2q2 ( 50527 ) <zitterbewegung@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Saturday October 08, 2005 @04:39PM (#13747967) Homepage
    Well this is one way to get more money into space flight. Shoot up duds ;-)
  • and was supposed to spend three years determining the effects of global warming.

    Bush pushed the big red button "aheh heh heh".
  • This satellite would have shown that ice levels were shrinking, bolstering the argument for global warming.

    Then again, they're ignoring all of the evidence now, why would this have mattered? :-)

  • Further info here... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @04:44PM (#13747982)
    Eurockot pressrelease [eurockot.com]

    Looks like it was another controller foulup that stopped a command from being issued to shut down stage 1 and seperate the upper stack, and causing a reentry of the entire package.

  • Shrinking ice? On Earth or Mars? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Because ice caps on Mars are shrinking:

    http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8029 [newscientist.com]

    http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mg s-092005-imagesc.html [nasa.gov]

    Of course, shrinking ice caps on Mars kinda kill the "ohmygodmankindiscausingglobalwarming" leftist groupthink crowd, doesn't it?

    • Re:Shrinking ice? On Earth or Mars? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TomHandy ( 578620 ) <(tomhandy) (at) (gmail.com)> on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:15PM (#13748110)
      Right, because of course, everything that happens on Mars must be directly parallel to what happens on Earth. So if the ice caps on Mars are shrinking, then it MUST mean that the ice caps on the Earth are shrinking for the same reason.

      And aside from that, if what humans are doing to the environment isn't responsible for the shrinking ice caps of Earth, then that means we should be free to spew out whatever crap we want into the environment without any concern for more basic things like air quality, etc.

      Stupid leftisft thinking indeed, because of course, concern about the environment is purely a "leftist" issue.

  • The satellite rode into space on a Rockot vehicle, a converted SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile. The rocket, which in the Cold War would have been armed with nuclear weapons, had been modified for peaceful space duties with the addition of a Breeze-KM upper stage.

    Hm. You add a stage to an ICBM, launch it, and wonder why it stops transmitting signals 90 minutes after launch.
  • This wouldn't be the first time a launched satellite has been 'lost' on purpose.

  • Conspiracy Theorists... (Score:4, Funny)

    by KrackHouse ( 628313 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @04:56PM (#13748041) Homepage
    I'll save you all some time. Bush has been pushing the Star Wars space weaponry system to defeat eco-satellites which would prove global warming true so Haliburton can continue gouging consumers and funneling the money to the skull and bones society which then funds the new world order... and aliens and stuff. Is that about right?
  • Dr Matthias Oehm, chief executive officer of Eurockot, said they had not received the expected signals from either the spacecraft or the upper stage of the rocket that should have injected it into orbit.

    That's probably because it broke up and crashed into the ocean [www.cbc.ca].
  • If we start using perfectly good weapons of mass destruction for peaceful purposes then I fear the terrorists have already won
  • On the bbc.com, there is a video of the launch and the subsequent explosion of the rocket. Just goes to show you that getting into space is difficult and risky. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4323378. stm/ [bbc.co.uk]

  • third? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eagl ( 86459 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:52PM (#13748268) Journal
    Isn't that the third converted Russian ICBM to have a launch failure? The launch price discount compared to other launch systems means nothing if it can't put the payload into the correct orbit. The other one I remember was that solar sail experiment, but I was sure there was at least one more that used one of these missile conversions that also failed to make orbit.
    • Hmm... Three converted warhead delivery systems fail one after the other... Sounds like someone in an America-shaped land doesn't want anyone but themselves to be at the forefront of space technology...

      Either that, or an automated sentry system detected a warhead launch and took action, and the military can't/won't turn it off...

      Oooooh, I like starting conspiracy theories!
  • And unless James can get it back, The world will be a much hotter place.
  • How many times have governments and obese space programs spend years and millions developing one thing, only to have it blow up in space because someone didn't convert feet to inches or forgot or because one tiny wire failed resulting in failure to launch a key component. There's so many different parts to these missions, and so many locations for human error, that it is totally impractical to assume a 100% success rate when putting things into space. Back in the age of the space race, money was being pou
  • Maybe they forgot to take the nuke out first?
  • This is what? The 3rd ICBM convered to a SLV (Space Launch Vehicle) to die? There was the solar sail one. I think there was another. And now this one. I can't believe anyone will use them these days. Also hopefully people realize that missiles that leave the atmosphere are not something that just happens. Reguardless of how big and advanced your country is, it's still very hard.

  • Two in one (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @07:34PM (#13748573) Homepage Journal
    In this kind of discussion, there are two kinds of obligatory comments. I might as well do both at once:
    • Informative [wikipedia.org] karma whoring.
    • Make satirical and/or deprecatory remarks about all the kneejerk "Global warning is a crock!" and "No it's not!" comments. For this discussion, the first kind of kneejerkism seems to dominate. It's as if just putting up a satellite to study global warming is a sign of tree-hugging moronity. Hey people, that's how science works: you form a hypothesis, and look for experiments to confirm or deny it. If you think the hypothesis is lame, suggest your own experiments — and spare us the brainless name-calling.
  • In an unrelated news the pentagon is reporting the first sucessful test of it's missile defense system today.
  • (and measure at the same time)

    Okay, what would be the feasibility of making an autonomous unit which floats on the ocean, anchors to the ice pack and covers the water around it w/ solar cells and uses the energy from the solar cells to extract salt from the sea water, chill it and spray it towards the ice pack?

    Set it up so that it disengages and re-anchors itself as the ice pack increases in size and it should ``just work''. Add a GPS unit and a radio transmitter and you can keep track of the edge (but not

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