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US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

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Re: US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

#71

Post by defrost »

actionfromafar wrote: post #34
alwa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accuweather, who also depend on this same USG sensor data for their modeling… I don’t think anybody wins from this. See e.g. https://www.accuweather.com/en/press/accuweather-does-not-su...

SpaceX?

Business as usual there,

SpaceX scores $81.6 million Space Force contract to launch weather satellite

  The contract for the mission designated USSF-178 was awarded on June 27  ( 2025 ) by the Space Systems Command and represents SpaceX’s third consecutive win under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 program.

  The mission will carry the Weather System Follow-on – Microwave Space Vehicle 2 (WSF-M2), along with a secondary payload of experimental small satellites called BLAZE-2.
~ https://spacenews.com/spacex-scores-81-6-million-space-force...

New weather sats going up, just not "free data for taxpayers".

Re: US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

#73

Post by jimnotgym »

tokai wrote: post #50
mtmail wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia, China, Europe have similar systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation#Global_na... It'd be a huge disruption but it's not irreplaceable.

With Galileo being interoperable with GPS and more accurate it might not even be that big of a deal.

Well done to the EU for forseeing this eventuality

Re: US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

#74

Post by potsandpans »

genter wrote: post #10
Mobius01 wrote: post #6

Is this an attempt at controlling the narrative around climate change, in line with the impacts at NOAA and other climate-related government agencies?

[flagged]

One decision can have multiple motives.

Re: US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

#75

Post by idiotsecant »

genter wrote: post #10
Mobius01 wrote: post #6

Is this an attempt at controlling the narrative around climate change, in line with the impacts at NOAA and other climate-related government agencies?

[flagged]

It's probably not even that sophisticated. It's almost certainly a variant of 'Why are we giving this away for free? We should be making money from this!!!' Not understanding the second-order money losing impacts of it going away is pretty much expected.

Re: US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

#77

Post by idiotsecant »

This is example number 7748492 of how the decline of America will be practically irreversible once a political machine with any kind of rational worldview is in charge again. It took a century to build some of the things that are being destroyed in days or weeks. We're looking at the fall of rome. The only question now is whether a dark age follows or whether someone else takes over.

Re: US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

#78

Post by dzhiurgis »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #54
burnt-resistor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timing is just, it's atrocious. Okay, at this very moment, I say we sit tight and assess.

That's what got us here in the first place, maybe stop doing that.

To where? Stock market ath and free AI for the masses?

Re: US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

#79

Post by thfuran »

jimnotgym wrote: post #73
tokai wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Galileo being interoperable with GPS and more accurate it might not even be that big of a deal.

Well done to the EU for forseeing this eventuality

The US used to significantly limit the accuracy of GPS signal available for civilian use, so that's not exactly hard to foresee.

Re: US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

#80

Post by dzhiurgis »

defrost wrote: post #71
actionfromafar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX?

Business as usual there, SpaceX scores $81.6 million Space Force contract to launch weather satellite The contract for the mission designated USSF-178 was awarded on June 27 ( 2025 ) by the Space Systems Command and represents SpaceX’s third consecutive win under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 program. The mission will carry the Weather System Follow-on – Microwave Space Vehicle 2 (WSF-M2),…

This sounds so cheap that we could have thousands of individuals launch their private constellations.

Do you really need to subsidise this anymore?

If anything brining competition to this space (pun intended) might improve the data quality.

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