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More on Triana

In Sunday’s New York Times featured an op-ed by Robert Park bemoaning NASA’s decision to terminate the Triana mission. (See previous discussion of that decision.) Park argues that the ties the mission had to then-Vice President Al Gore doomed the mission:

Scientists had dreamed of such an observatory for years. They hoped Mr. Gore’s influence would make it happen. Mr. Gore’s support would end up destroying it. Those who hated him, hated Triana. His dream of inspiring environmentalists and schoolchildren served only to trivialize the project. It was ridiculed as “Gore’s screen saver.”

Roger Pielke Jr., writing on the blog Prometheus, takes issue with Park’s assessment. Pielke notes the concerns about the science the mission could perform, even after the National Research Council issued a “luke-warm endorsement” of Triana, including a letter he and Bob Harriss, formerly of NASA, wrote to Science after the NRC report came out:

In the case of Triana, by focusing exclusively on “scientific merit,” the NRC report neglected two important aspects of program evaluation: the cost-effectiveness and opportunity costs associated with the mission–which are particularly important given that no recently published NRC reports called for a mission such as Triana as part of the nation’s remote sensing strategy.

3 comments to More on Triana

  • Park is completely correct that Triana fell victim to vitriolic Republican propaganda. It was “Goresat”. The Republicans on the House Science committee were not above this kind of talk. These critics had no real loyalty to scientific merit or cost effectiveness, since at the same time they fully supported Potemkin science on the space station.

    Roger Pielke has no argument that it didn’t happen. He says that we should put partisanship behind us, but with Triana, partisanship was the elephant in the room. He instead argues that the science on Triana wasn’t competitive. That was once conceivably true, but what is the argument for cancelling a largely finished spacecraft? If you don’t count the money that won’t come back anyway, then finishing the job does look cost effective.

    Indeed, cancelling Triana looks particularly dubious in light of Bush’s insistence that global warming needs more study. Does it need more study or doesn’t it? It makes the call for more study look like an excuse rather than a sincere request.

  • Roger Pielke, Jr.

    Greg-

    Actually, the onus is in Robert Park to substantiate his bold claims that the Bush Administration cancelled Triana. As far as I have heard it was an internal NASA decision, though I’d welcome evidence to the contrary.

    When TRMM was on the chopping block the scientific community rallied in support of it. Nothing like that happened for Triana, which suggests that it couldn’t have been too high a priority for too many people, other than political partisans and those associated with the mission.

    Finally, sunk costs don’t matter, particularly when there is a VSE to feed, precious few shuttle flights left and large costs associated with refitting Triana for another launch vehicle.

  • Roger, while I agree with you that Triana clearly did not have large-scale scientific support, we did need the Solar Storm warning aspects of the mission. However, in my civics class I was taught that executive agencies (like NASA) are part of the Administration, and this decision was made by the Administration even if it was an internal NASA decision.

    All that said, on this issue I completely agree with Greg. The Republican opponents of Triana didn’t give a damn about whether it had scientific merit or not, they saw only an opportunity to attack their political opponents, which they did with gusto.

    — Donald