Amazing what a rounding error in the federal budget can do for humanity. More please.
Are you volunteering to pay more taxes?
I would if I could choose which program the money was directed at.
End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final images
41–50 of 55 posts
Re: End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final images
#42The two different pictures of Las Vegas in 1999 and 2024 shows the environmental tragedy unfolding: the city doubled in size, and Lake Mead shrank.
Re: End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final images
#43It seems like a lot of these government-owned space things last a lot longer than they're made for. There's Landsat, Spirit, Opportunity, Hubble, the Voyagers, et cetera. It seems to be a pretty steep curve - either they fail on launch or landing or very early, or they far outlast expectations. There seems to be little that meets expectations. I can see lots of failures - space stuff is hard - but why so many things…
>government-owned space things last a lot longer than they're made for
Don't forget that once upon a time, commercial-owned things lasted a lot longer too. Unfortunately the mba's took over and planned obsolescence became a thing.
Re: End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final images
#44In the Las Vegas slider, the Lake Mead before/after difference is startling.
Aral Sea (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/AralSea - notice the 1960 outline in pale yellow before starting the 2000-2018 playback) and Lake Chad i'd say even more startling.
Re: End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final images
#45perhaps the most important news to me here is that landsat 9 was launched in 02021. landsat 8 is also still alive and kicking!
Re: End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final images
#46The two different pictures of Las Vegas in 1999 and 2024 shows the environmental tragedy unfolding: the city doubled in size, and Lake Mead shrank.
It looks like it's 20% smaller bounds-wise, but that's the top layer of the lake: the volume reduction must be at around 40-50%...
Re: End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final images
#47The two different pictures of Las Vegas in 1999 and 2024 shows the environmental tragedy unfolding: the city doubled in size, and Lake Mead shrank.
The overwhelming majority of the water does not go to Las Vegas (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact) — Nevada is only allocated 4% of the total water drawn from the Lower Colorado River. Las Vegas gets blamed due to its proximity to Lake Mead and the fact that it is in a desert, but it’s actually adopted aggressive water control measures over the years (see https://www.snwa.com/conservation/understand-laws-ordinances... for recent examples).
Also worth noting that while the colorizations of these satellite photos tend to paint the city in green, it is NOT very green at all. Clark County deprecated lawns ages ago by banning new ones and paying people to remove their existing lawns to replace with desert landscaping.
But that can only help mitigate the overdraw of the Colorado so much when 96% of the water is going to places that have much less stringent water conservation policy.
Re: End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final images
#48Frightening how much smaller Lake Mead is now. > How long does Lake Mead have left? Lake Mead has been facing a water crisis for many years. The water level in the lake has been dropping due to the increasing demand for water and the decreasing supply. If the trend continues, the lake could run out of water in the next 10 to 15 years. Great…I was in Vegas last weekend, I guess they’ll just run it until it’s dry. Huma…
The city of Vegas is among the best and most proactive in the country at water preservation and reclamation. Sadly, it still might not be enough. In the 90s they started paying people to tear up their lawns, and more recently they outlawed lawns and started tearing some up forcefully, and last I checked watering grass still accounted for a double-digit percentage of their water budget.
Irrigating existing grass with Colorado River water is banned effective 2027.
Re: End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final images
#49Amazing what a rounding error in the federal budget can do for humanity. More please.
Are you volunteering to pay more taxes?
In parts of the world without the HN anti-tax reflex, voting to increase taxes, in order to increase provision of goods and services, occurs.
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lMOL7GaPWI
Re: End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final images
#50It seems like a lot of these government-owned space things last a lot longer than they're made for. There's Landsat, Spirit, Opportunity, Hubble, the Voyagers, et cetera. It seems to be a pretty steep curve - either they fail on launch or landing or very early, or they far outlast expectations. There seems to be little that meets expectations. I can see lots of failures - space stuff is hard - but why so many things…
When smart and dedicated people are allowed time to think, plan and execute instead of being constantly forced to sacrifice everything at the altar of next-quarter results, the quality of the output tends to be better.