[extropy-chat] Huygens: First visitor to Titan

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Stephen Van_Sickle <sjvans at ameritech.net> wrote:

> As do "pure" scientists.  Try getting your NIH grant
> renewed without publishing.  Or your first one without
> a publishing record.  It is an imperfect measure, but
> far, far better than "minutes of science", which comes
> perilously close to the labor theory of value.
> 
> And you would be amazed at how fast a "pure" scientist
> becomes an "applied" one when results start suggesting
> a profitable product. 

Minutes of science is meant to suggest some degree of quantity of data,
assuming that mission scientists schedule acquisition of data to
maximize bytes per dollar. 

Of course, this ignores metrics of quality of data, however it can be
treated as a dollar average per minute. Some minutes of science may be
of immensely greater value in the final analysis than others. 

For example, with Cassini, large amounts of time spent in orbit,
nowhere near any rings or moons, may be worth little beyond
magnetospheric data and meteorological observation of the Saturnian
atmosphere.

It is obvious that every minute Huygens spent in descent and on the
surface was of immense value simply due to the scarcity of time
available, and the total lack of any competetive missions to that
location in the forseable future. Ergo, high demand, low supply (and
thus having nothing to do with any labor theory of value). In that
respect, the data gathered may be worth almost two and a half million
bucks a minute. How many megabytes of data the probe can collect per
minute (and store for transmission) would determine a better metric of
how many dollars per byte of data.

The question, though, is, is the average minute of science time on
Titan worth two thousand times more than the average minute spent in
Saturn orbit? Or four thousand times more than the average minute spent
on Mars by a Rover?

I would posit that an argument can be made that data about Mars is of
greater importance to humanity at this point in time than data about
Titan, because Mars is closer and has far greater potential for
terraforming. From this point of view, the Mars Rovers are a far more
profitable investment than the Huygens probe. However, if it can be
shown that data from Titan gives scientists a better idea of how
greenhouse effects work, how planetary chemistry create them, etc, then
that data may be worth something to the Mars effort.

This all being said, I am also hoping to get some idea of whether
government spends too much money to buy too little data or not, whether
private industry can do it better, and if so what price private
industry is willing to pay to acquire such data.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


		
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