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Databases created by satellites and telescopes are 'mined' for decades to discover new science. Critical in making a useful database are no holes. Overlapping data is also essential to calibrate a retiring satellite's sensors with new satellite sensors.
We wasted $billions on bogus manned spacecraft including Constellation, Ares, and Orion. Projects promoted by people so technically inferior that those programs were scrapped when nearly finished. NOVA does not discuss earth science from the ISS. We wasted significant money and human talent on that $150billion creature and foolish manned spacecraft for items that would do near zero science. Real science is mostly done with devices that rarely need humans.
Those deep ocean currents have been curiosities for at least a decade. And are a major concern to global warming. They may have been a major sink for greenhouse gases such as CO2. Once those trapped gases return to the surface, then that 'sink' is gone.
Also not discussed by that report are gliders. Robot submarines that cruise for months or years beneath the ocean. Periodically rising to the surface to report their data to satellites. Rutgers U recently pioneered one from NJ to Spain. Another has just recently completed a journey from the US west coast to Australia.
(The US Navy is planning a glider fleet to perform what drones do in the air. The Air Force is also flying a secret X-37 space shuttle that carries no people.)
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