Quote:
Originally Posted by Robinson
Oops. I should have said, "Like the Hubble, Kepler, MOST, SIM Lite Astrometric Observatory, Swift Gamma Ray Burst, Explorer, COROT, Dark Energy Space Telescope, Terrestrial Planet Finder, those kinds of expensive data gathering devices.
And yes, they are not all American telescopes. But they are all payed for by taxes. Yet the people who pay can't see the output. As it comes in.
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I'll let others debate how much of that data is, or would be,
usefully distributed live. And simply ask again where is the example of a worthwhile discovery withheld?
And are you saying that you, as a typical taxpayer, are demanding EVERY single piece of data and telemetry from every spacecraft/test/experiment/operation be immediately broadcast on the internet, or via some other distribution system?
Do you think that would be money well spent? All data, including that which may require intensive processing, crosschecking and expert interpretation, including telemetry from the craft?
Gee, I only speak for myself, but I'd prefer that the scientific community did their best NOT to spend my money on deluging me with data and providing the necessary interpretations, but instead got on with their job and just showed me the good stuff, or provided me with data if I could show that I needed it. I don't pretend to know better than them.
Now I also recognise that the line must be drawn somewhere, but you haven't as yet given any indication on where that line might be. Perhaps that is a good topic for another thread, but at the moment I don't see anything tangible to debate.
May I also ask - are you a recognised scientist/researcher in these fields? Have you actually *asked* to receive anything that is particularly meaningful or useful to you, that is not available? If so, what?
I am neither of those, by the way, but at least three times during the various conversations I have had with space agencies (not just NASA) the result has been that the representative has happily sent me information that was 'unreleased' (or at least I couldn't find it!). On one occasion it was an image that simply wasn't online, on another a much higher resolution TIF to replace a low-res JPG, and on the third, it was a table of data and graph.
I would hazard a guess that >90% of the information coming in to these agencies would be useless without interpretation, and mostly dead boring to anyone who wasn't working in the field. And I would be horrified to learn that my money was being spent so wastefully if it was all distributed.