by ht-syseng | 2025-08-07 15:55:56+00:00
> Just because it cost money to put the satellite into orbit doesn’t mean that it has value.

True. But the fact that it was actively generating valuable data does.

> Would a buyer pay $15M a year for the data produced by this satellite? Maybe, but the fact that the government put it into orbit and not a private company is telling.

Not really. One of of the first things you learn in an economics class is the notion of a "public good": goods which are provided by the government that increase the wellbeing of society, but for which no individual actor in society is incentivized to create or maintain. Street lights and interstate road networks are the prototypical examples, the original GPS constellation might be another candidate.

> Realistically, because it is owned by the government, it’s worth exactly what the government says it is.

EDIT: My original response to this point was weak, the revision is: certain subsets of the government (like NASA) consider it valuable. Other subsets of the government are seeking to destroy it because they don't like the data it produces. The latter subset does not consist of scientists, and has an active political interest in suppressing that information. I think that the former subset of the government is more capable of an accurate value assessment in this context.

> Just ask the Biden administration who sold materials for the border wall far below cost.

I do not have access to Biden admin officials and have no idea what you're talking about so I'll take your word for it.

> How does this satellite mitigate existential risk? We already know carbon dioxide contributes to climate change. We should spend money on reducing it, not on costly projects that tell us things we already know.

Here's the wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiting_Carbon_Observatory_2

Understanding a threat is a necessary precursor to defeating it. In a concrete sense, this data is necessary for models that facilitate prediction of effects that inform policy decisions we make. Metaphorically, if you're in a forest and you know that a grizzly bear is out to get you, knowing the direction of and arrival time of the bear useful information. Except that doesn't do it justice, because in this metaphor, we've already constructed a lookout tower, and you're taking the position that burning down the lookout tower will save us the effort of having to climb the ladder, and we already know a bear is coming for us anyways so who cares?

> Speaking of existential risk, the US national debt is a far more urgent and certain risk than climate change. At least decommissioning this satellite helps on that front.

I agree that the national debt is a serious issue, but I already addressed the cost point in a previous comment.

> How much carbon gets removed from the atmosphere if we keep it operational?

Directly? None. Indirectly? Speculative. Whether it directly removes carbon is different than whether it provides insight which allow us to more efficiently and effectively deal with the risk by predicting how it will materialize, which is objective anyways. Historically, a strategy of "we're going to destroy assets that provide valuable information because we don't like the reality they present" has never worked out.