I haven’t dug into either the programmatics or the politics of this, but Jeff Masters says that the Senate is about to cut NOAA’s budget and move the funds to criminal alien assistance. I don’t live in south Florida any more (hallelujiah!) but I think that tracking hurricanes is a higher priority for that money. I do think that if I did dig into this, I might find more innovative and cost-effective proposals to do it than another QuickSCAT (like data purchase), but I’d rather have that than nothing.

I would also note that if the satellite had been designed to be serviced, and Shuttle had lived up to its initial program goals (including, of course, west-coast launch capability), we wouldn’t have to launch a new satellite — it would be an excellent candidate for repair, with its instruments still in good shape. But because Shuttle didn’t, it wasn’t. And because satellites aren’t designed to be serviced, there is less market to justify systems capable of servicing them. Chicken and egg. Such are the ongoing consequences of not being a spacefaring nation.

I wonder if this would have been more in the news if we’d had a more active hurricane season, and were still in the middle of it? Timing is all.