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Nothing worse than an article with acronyms without stating what those acronyms are.

by valgor 7y ago

ahopskin 7y ago
Which acronyms would those be? The couple I saw were at least expanded.
lucb1e 7y ago
I know what NOAA is but I didn't (from the headline) understand what a weather satellite does for saving people (at least in tangible numbers, I get that a hurricane prediction helps but 421 people is awfully specific). So I would agree that the headline could use some work. It's also not as if NOAA is the only provider of this service (see Galileo), but I'm not sure if there are stats published for other systems.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  The stats will be for the whole COSPAS SARSAT system but limited to rescues in the United States because Americans only care about other Americans (not all of them but in general) The system doesn't present users with "This beacon was detected by this NOAA satellite". You could trace it back, but it's generally not relevant and people are focused on stuff like Do we have a good fix? / Does the registration tell us anything useful? / Who is available that can be tasked to go look? Also do you then count scenarios where five satellites were involved and one was NOAA? A lot of alerts will be "seen" by more than one satellite. NOAA has some geostationary birds, which can be enough for sole alert if the beacon has GPS, because GPS tells the beacon where it is (if it can see the sky well enough) and then the beacon tells the geostationary satellite its location as part of the distress beacon message. For those obviously they're "parked" over America so maybe some central American or even Canadian incidents but mostly US stuff. For a beacon without GPS the geostationary alert is not much help. "Joe needs rescuing from somewhere in your hemisphere". With 406MHz digital beacons you might perhaps try calling Joe's wife "Oh! Joe is out on the lake, actually he's a bit late for dinner" and that might be useful but mostly alerts with no location are not actioned. But lower orbits mean a non-geostationary NOAA bird could be over anywhere in the world, and those low orbit satellites can measure doppler shift (ie determine location without GPS), it's just that the rescuers wouldn't necessarily be American and in most cases neither would the victims. Australia has lots of wilderness and so lots of alerts for example.

Nothing worse than an article with acronyms without stating what those acronyms are.

by valgor 7y ago

Nothing worse than an article with acronyms without stating what those acronyms are.

ahopskin 7y ago

Which acronyms would those be? The couple I saw were at least expanded.

lucb1e 7y ago

I know what NOAA is but I didn't (from the headline) understand what a weather satellite does for saving people (at least in tangible numbers, I get that a hurricane prediction helps but 421 people is awfully specific). So I would agree that the headline could use some work. It's also not as if NOAA is the only provider of this service (see Galileo), but I'm not sure if there are stats published for other systems.

tialaramex 7y ago
The stats will be for the whole COSPAS SARSAT system but limited to rescues in the United States because Americans only care about other Americans (not all of them but in general) The system doesn't present users with "This beacon was detected by this NOAA satellite". You could trace it back, but it's generally not relevant and people are focused on stuff like Do we have a good fix? / Does the registration tell us anything useful? / Who is available that can be tasked to go look? Also do you then count scenarios where five satellites were involved and one was NOAA? A lot of alerts will be "seen" by more than one satellite. NOAA has some geostationary birds, which can be enough for sole alert if the beacon has GPS, because GPS tells the beacon where it is (if it can see the sky well enough) and then the beacon tells the geostationary satellite its location as part of the distress beacon message. For those obviously they're "parked" over America so maybe some central American or even Canadian incidents but mostly US stuff. For a beacon without GPS the geostationary alert is not much help. "Joe needs rescuing from somewhere in your hemisphere". With 406MHz digital beacons you might perhaps try calling Joe's wife "Oh! Joe is out on the lake, actually he's a bit late for dinner" and that might be useful but mostly alerts with no location are not actioned. But lower orbits mean a non-geostationary NOAA bird could be over anywhere in the world, and those low orbit satellites can measure doppler shift (ie determine location without GPS), it's just that the rescuers wouldn't necessarily be American and in most cases neither would the victims. Australia has lots of wilderness and so lots of alerts for example.