[extropy-chat] SPACE: where are we?

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, Mike Lorrey wrote:

Quoting Brian's observation..

> Just not a ton of meat there so far...

Ok reasonable response but there is nothing preventing the
public distribution of what meat there is.  Given the number
of people working on this how difficult would it be to have
a JPL blog and to have several people spend 5 minutes a day
entering their comments into it?  Yep, we got back 47 Megabytes
of data, yep we downloaded 6 instruction sequences, etc.

I can't be the only one who feels these are the children,
agents, avatars, etc. of humanity on a friggen different planet.
Haven't we got ads on TV asking us "Do you know where your
children are?" or something to that effect.  Where the heck
is the JPL in answering that question?

> Is this because the reporters are too ignorant to know what to ask, or
> is there really that little real information amongst all the data that
> comes back?

There is a lot of information there but most of it cannot be
processed by the public.  For example I have no clue as to
what filters are being used on the cameras to take the pictures.
I haven't even seen a good explanation as to how many cameras
there are, where they are located, etc.  (Yes I can probably go
dig in NASA files and discover this -- but so can the reporters.)

> Keep in mind, that all of the 3D data that comes back gets loaded into
> the simulator database, so if you've downloaded the rover simulator
> app, you can download this data and drive around in your own accurate marscape.

Ok Mike -- that is a useful note and I have noticed citations that there
are a lot of people that seem to be making use of this (to steer their
remote children around Mars).  But there is a big divide between what
you would like your kids to do and what they are actually doing.

I'm simply stating that I want an as real time as possible feedback
for what the heck is going on.

Robert