194
Carl Wunsch
Figures 12.3 and 12.4. Sketches (Wunsch, 1984) of a global hydrographic program. Lines drawn with
a straight edge on top of Reid’s (1981) salinity field. The figure was intended only for estimation of costs,
but was taken by some to represent the actual plan—which took many years to define in detail.
to be a very complicated story in its own right. National space agencies, such as
the U.S. NASA and the French CNES, have their own politics, dynamics, and a
multiplicity of constituencies. International space agencies (ESA) are immensely
complicated organizations attempting to respond to diverse national pressures and
priorities. Advocates of WOCE and the various satellite missions undertook a long
negotiation process to attempt to provide a simultaneous global in situ field program
along with concurrent flight of the requisite spacecraft. Although I will not attempt
to describe the details of this process here, much of the strategy consisted of telling
oceanographic funding agencies that WOCE had to be done within a finite time
Carl Wunsch
Figures 12.3 and 12.4. Sketches (Wunsch, 1984) of a global hydrographic program. Lines drawn with
a straight edge on top of Reid’s (1981) salinity field. The figure was intended only for estimation of costs,
but was taken by some to represent the actual plan—which took many years to define in detail.
to be a very complicated story in its own right. National space agencies, such as
the U.S. NASA and the French CNES, have their own politics, dynamics, and a
multiplicity of constituencies. International space agencies (ESA) are immensely
complicated organizations attempting to respond to diverse national pressures and
priorities. Advocates of WOCE and the various satellite missions undertook a long
negotiation process to attempt to provide a simultaneous global in situ field program
along with concurrent flight of the requisite spacecraft. Although I will not attempt
to describe the details of this process here, much of the strategy consisted of telling
oceanographic funding agencies that WOCE had to be done within a finite time