Slashdot Mirror
Amateurs Beat Space Agencies To Titan Pictures
loconet writes "Nature.com is reporting that a group of enthusiastic amateurs managed to process raw images of Titan from the Huygens probe faster that any of the giant space agencies in charge of the mission. Terragen, a freeware program that converts the basic brightness data in aerial pictures into a topographical map, to generate the ground-level vista was used."
Without quality control it's usually possible to beat a company, or organization to the punch.
(And doesn't mean it is necessarily inferior in quality either).
But it is a little unfair.
I'm impressed with them..., but it's not a surprise really. With the raw data images being released as soon as they were made available, anyone who was interested enough could begin processing them immediately. I doubt NASA/ESA thought it was a race. But still, great job for them! They probably did it for a fraction of the cost that the big agencies needed to process the images ;-) So much beaurocracy..
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
When the amateurs can build a spaceship that can fly to Saturn!
Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
Is there nothing that can't be open-sourced? Talk about the power of hobbyists...
No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.
These images Are A LOT better than the esa ones!, nice!
I've been using it for some years now. It is surprisingly easy to load these grayscale images in a heigh-maps and get an accurate render. I'm kicking myself now for not thinking of doing the same thing!
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
From the article:
Liekens does caution that not all of the pictures will be scientifically reliable, something that ESA and NASA obviously have to take care over.
"We're impressed with their ability and enthusiasm, and looked at their images with great interest," says Bashar Rizk, part of the Huygens imaging team from the University of Arizona, Tucson.
A key paragraph. Does fater always means better? Before we jump on the NASA/ESA bashing bandwagon, we should remember that both are renowned scientific institutions that gain reputation not by doing everything as fast as possible, but as accurately and precisely as possible.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Of all these pieces, I like Christian Waldvogel landscape the best:
i ta n_panorama_colored.jpg
http://www.lupomesky.cz/mirror/aliekens-titan/t
It's very evocative. Here's this probe from one world, landing on another, and what does it see?
A shoreline!
What a wonderful throwback to the age of exploration here on earth.
Stefan
Why is this a good thing? They created some fake images in a terrain generator, and that is supposedly beating ESA? ESA released the ACTUAL images, not fake ones.
TheHustler
http://www.elmarko.org/ - Useless bilge
http://www.asylum-games.co.uk/ - Co-Founder
Much larger images than on the nature.com page:
http://anthony.liekens.net/huygens_static.html/
Enjoy!
Another poster has already mentioned the quality control dangers in this 'free for all' approach, but so long as the tools and processes used are documented, experts can check things out after the fact, and the early "rushes" can always be corrected if QA does slip.
All in all there is surely plenty of scope for 'distributed contribution' in this arena. SETI@Home is an obvious example but this shows it doesn't necessarily have to be so formalised/organised.
The coolest thing I have seen from the great site gathering these open images (link in article) is a poster combinging and tying together all of the pictures seen so far here.
.Mac account so it will hold up to load (I just hope it's not locked).
It's 2MB and I wouldn't nromally link to something that big on Slashdot, but it's very cool and held in a
It shows a picture of Titan, and the square from that that represents a blow-up of a small section, then links a part of that to the aerial view displaying the "rivers", then from that to the side view from above showing the shore, then shows in there where the landing site is and the picture from that.
Enjoy!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If we only wanted pretty pictures, nobody would have need to sends a probe. you could have paid an illustrator.
Terragen renders hightfields with fractal detail algorithms and textures them algorthmical.
So they somewhow photoshoped a more or less high field out of the raw and rendered it with some "grey rocks" or so texture setting, because the standart white snow peaks isnt fitting...
I certainly dont mind science taking its time. This thing was lauchned YEARS ago. one week or two more for correct, final images doesnt hurt much. Even if those random idiots are crying havoc because they dont seem to have anything better to do...
Better waiting than having quick crap tossed out.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Maybe NASA should use all that extra cash to hire those guys.
Meet new people, and kill them.
Mirror links here and here courtesy of mirrordot
got sig?
Is anyone other than NASA/ESA able to intercept the transmissions from the Cassini probe and do anything useful with the feed, or any other probe sent out in the last 30-some years for that matter?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
"Liekens does caution that not all of the pictures will be scientifically reliable, something that ESA and NASA obviously have to take care over."
Most of the scientists at ESA and NASA involved with the mission were probably spending most of that same time just remembering that they could breath again. (That, or toasting the success.) And since they weren't exactly racing to get the images out, saying that they were "beat" is perhaps a bit misleading.
It's also worth remembering that the science teams are almost certainly sitting on quite a bit more data, so when their pictures get released, I'm sure that there will be plenty more to "oooh" and "ahhh" about.
(Not to dismiss what amateurs do. There is a lot of nice work done by non-professional astronomers, even on the image processing side of things.)
That picture looks so earth-like with the water and all.. Maybe the landing was a hollywood hoax! =)
Ah, crap. I guess you can mod that one down "-1, Ironic" since somebody posted essentially the same comment two minutes before I hit the "submit" button.
A few were generated off terrain data (which is actually kind of cool because they are "real" in a way, in that they are clearer renderings of real features), but there are also a number of really well-done panoramas and image enhancemnet done to make the "real" images look better as well.
Check out the link in the article, cool stuff.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Because me and my old version of KPT Bryce have also been able to come up with some Titan "photos"
(And likewise: according to my photos I confirm that the Huygens probe descended conveniently right above a stunning shoreline).
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
. . . there was the aether ship expedition of 1897, but even Professor Challenger admits in the expedition log that the Explorer may actually have landed on Callisto. Sextants just don't work well more than fifty million leagues from the Sun.
What a shame that all of Nelly Bligh's photographic plates shattered when the Explorer crash-landed in Patagonia. With their lost the only physical evidence is the preserved Titanian owned by Mr. Barnum.
Stefan Jones
Okay...next question qould be... how'd they get the pics at the same time or first?
Someone is VERY imbarrassed right now... or scrambling for excuses. ;) "Well, yes, sir, but see, our image are of much higher detail because.. er.. we have to do a much higher process...er..algorythm to them!"
...but bear in mind that if NASA and ESA hadn't sent this probe there, there would not have been any raw data to process.
:-)
Thumbs up to the folks doing the processing, and thumbs up to Terragen for the great software, but big, big points to the folks who SEND THE PROBE.
If there's a castle floating upside down in the sky, then there's a castle floating upside down in the sky.
"Well, we could have beaten them, except for that darn 15 day delay due to concerns over the FCC.
"I mean, what if those images captured life on Titan, and they were right in the middle of a 'wardrobe malfunction' or something?
"I guess maybe in some ways we are still proud to be your father's space agency."
The science involved in these images represents the careers of many people. They had a right to publish first. You took that right away from them. Do not expect raw images of important discoveries any more.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Amazing how the texture/wave pattern stays consistent right up to the land.
Hmm...
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Terragen, a freeware program that converts the basic brightness data in aerial pictures into a topographical map, to generate the ground-level vista was used.
Yoda pleased to hear this will be.
Why do you bother?
Who wrote this, Yoda?! ;^)
...In this upcoming Mastercard commercial:
Coffee table book on Nasa. . . . . . . . . . . $19.99
Open source images from Titan . . . . . . . . Free w/ Terragen
Beating Nasa to Mars with a manned mission . . Priceless
There are some things Bill Gates has already bought, for others, there's Mastercard.http://img118.exs.cx/img118/8690/cassinipic7sg.jp
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
These are relatively poorly done computer renders that are based on the raw data, NASA/ESA will release much better, and more accurate images - which will take longer to complete.
They have an assload more data to put into them than the raw images released to the public.
Oops, I forgot where I was posting for a minute..
I *really* mean "hahah NASA are dumb because all americans suck!! ahhahahahahah NASA sucks!!! They are so dumb hahaha waste of money hahah!!!"
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This word is very commonly used for hobbyists, sounds a little derogatory. Sounds a little like Immature.
What it really means is the guy isnt getting paid, or rather, he/she has higher motivations than the weekends paycheck.
What do you call the Amateurs who built a product that beat the flagship product of the worlds richest corporation?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
This is a popularity contest. They have to be more popular than other things competing for limited government resources. Even though it isn't as "important" as adding to the sum total of human knowledge, the PR is what determines how much money is available for the next round of career making projects. And unlike data analysis which will continue for quite a while, the PR is time sensitive. They should have been trying to kick everything else off the news with sexy pictures, and permission for the viewers at home to pat themselves on the back at how awesome humanity is. Being a whore does lack a certain dignity. I agree. But it does pay well. And at some point that have to ask themselves is the appearence of propriety more important than the opportunity to do more and better science? I think the obvious answer is "No."
Please remember who built the robotic probes that gathered the data, and who allowed it to be shared with the world. The ESA and NASA were the source, in both senses, of this data. They were also good enough to share the raw data with the general public, not just their finished analysis.
When you're willing to work all night through because of your love for hacking, you'll likely beat those who treat this as a daytime job -- and have a life otherwise.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So how long till a Titan MMORPG is released?
Maybe something a little like Dune or Command and Conquer as well, to send spaceships and start harvesting spice (or something).
Given it has oceans and hills, rendering it all into something like the Giants citizen kabuto engine would be perfect and beautiful.... if they can optimize the engine just a little bit.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Again, they are not trying to compete with the actual science teams that are processing the raw images still. They are simply giving a preview, a sample if you will, of what can be expected. If they were concerned about anyone processing the raw images they released, they wouldn't have released them.
If am amauteur goofs and gets the wrong color, or maybe points out something that is really noise, no one is going to really notice. If NASA goofs, on the other hand, everyone notices. Besides, the NASA people were also probably trying to find signs of fluid motion and stuff, the amauteur's were going for "cool" views. :-).
But I must say to the amauteurs, GO FOR IT
Yeah, there are some pictures on that page that are partly artwork because they took the creative liberty to fill in gaps.
But there are other images on that page that are just like what NASA and the ESA will do, which is going through the trouble to stitch together all the raw images, and leave blanks where there is no info. They did a great job of compiling the raw info and sharing with everyone to see.
Writing off all their work as "quick crap" is pretty lame.
Okay...next question qould be... how'd they get the pics at the same time or first?
;) "Well, yes, sir, but see, our image are of much higher detail because.. er.. we have to do a much higher process...er..algorythm to them!"
Someone is VERY imbarrassed right now... or scrambling for excuses.
NASA and the ESA were nice enough to release the raw images before they had time to process them. That's how these people got the raw images.
I'm surprised that enough sunlight reaches Titan's surface to get such good pictures. Are these long-exposure shots?
On hearing, pleased will Yoda be.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I want to reiterate/emphasize an earlier comment...
This data requires calibration to transform it to usable data. Sure these look nice, but what are the *real* colors/greyscale/temperature/etc. that these images depict?
That said, I look at a lot of uncalibrated imagery and it's often fine to the naked eye. Since that's really the only use for these particular images, it's nice that they're out. Just do not mistake this for real scientific data -- or even accurate imagery -- at best it's a reasonable approximation.
But damn, the ESA is slow at getting stuff out. NASA has done a MUCH better job at releasing Cassini images... the ESA works at a snails pace by comparison.
-Pie
Yes, considering what Terragen can do with shorelines, it's not exactly a high quality render, really.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Titan looks quite a bit like Morrowind. Now all we need are swords and bioengineered elves and we're ready to go.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Of course, I'd be even more excited if a trusted authority (such as NASA) were to release trustworthy images such as this. Not "that could be there", but "that is there"! Still, the raw data which is available is (presumably) trustworthy, so the images which have been produced ought to at least be indicative of the true state of affiars there.
I have two questions -- first, is an accurate photographic representation of this vista in our future? and second, what are the conditions there (temperature, atmospheric pressure and composition, windspeed, etc.)?
The science involved in these images represents the careers of many people. They had a right to publish first. You took that right away from them. Do not expect raw images of important discoveries any more.
Do you think this really offended the ESA or NASA? Get real. They released the raw info knowing that people were going to look at it and compile it. They did publish it first. They gave the world the raw data.
They also represent the tax dollars of millions of "civilians" who have just as much right to them.
They had a right to publish first.
Fortunately for us, they did: right up on that webserver with a nice, fat pipe. Thanks, space agencies!
Do not expect raw images of important discoveries any more.
That presumes that NASA/ESA are so full of regrettably stupid rocket scientists that none of them - not one - realized that someone else might take that data and make it look pretty. Sure.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There were several pictures posted on that site. The pictures that you are referring to are only one or two of them. The rest are not fictional, they are purely the raw data that the ESA posted, and they stitched those raw photos together to create a montage.
Has anyone noticed that in the animated GIF, there's something swimming around in the ethane current that the lander fell in?
If you did, you'd see that the majority of the pictures on there are mosaics of actual photos, and NOT fake images made in a program.
The probe took many shots so they could create a mosaic. The ESA released all the raw images. These people took those raw images and put together the mosaic. Nothing imaginary there.
[RANT]
/. id's under 3000 be allowed to say something first and not to expect any good posts in the future from important folks? Something to think about... ;^) ;^b
Sometimes I don't understand the academic types in their desire to "own" an area of knowledge. Knowledge that is discovered using public moneies cannot be "owned", and nobody has a "right" to publish something before someone-else, just because they were breathing air near their first.
I'm certain they "want" to publish first, and quite possibly they "own" their techniques to process the discovered information in their proprietary way, but that's a far cry from having the "right" to publish first.
This arguement was advanced during the human genome project. Somehow academics felt they had a right to publish it before the industrial folks (like celera which developed different and faster techniques to analyse the "public" discovery of DNA). I'm sure a few academics had their careers represented by the HG project and the fact that someone stepped on their turf was probably very infuriating, but that is life.
We've come a long way from the time when a few "priests" owned knowledge and kept it from the unwashed masses because they were the only ones "trained" to interpret it (conveniently by writing it in latin). Somehow some academics can't leave that era behind. "Big" science is funded today by public money and it's really hard to make the argument that raw images of important discoveries funded with public money aren't available to the public.
I tire of the high priest/priestess arguements made by the academic community. Why don't they just come up with something better and faster to make it worth waiting for, rather than complain that someone is doing it better and faster than them and they have some inherent "right" because they dabbled thier toes in that turf first?
Anyhow, how different is that than a "first post"? Normally, nobody reads them because they are often not interesting, but what if someone said something interesting and it just happened to be from an anonymous coward and first in the list? Should we be complaining that it was an anonymous coward and only people with
[/RANT]
Here are all of the processed pictures from the leikens site, without bothering to properly mirror the site. They don't allow deep linking, so here you can play with just the images. For proper credits see the liekens site.
The NASA scientists would be fools to release these images in a raw format as soon as they're available and then try to beat amateurs, who aren't responsible for the rest of the mission. Once the information is obtained years can be spent analysing it. In other words, when the mission is in progress the teams are focused on the mission, not post mission analysis.
All these guys did was use software to make 3d models of the terrain and then pictures from those models. If you want to try something really fun, and have a mathematical inclination and a lot of time on your hands try downloading pictures from hubble, or from one of the large radio telescopes and doing some data reduction. The software's freely available on the web and runs on Linux. To get anything meaningful from the data you'll have to spend a lot of time learning about the data, instruments used to capture it, and the astro sources you're looking at though.
This is the sort of thing that should be encouraged in highschools and unis around the planet.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
WTF are those things?
Sorry, dude. Stitching pictures together doesn't space science make. Doing it right and interpreting the pictures is.
But I think the shots weren't taken fast enough for that to be any type of motion picture.
"ahhahahahahah NASA sucks!!! They are so dumb hahaha waste of money hahah!!!"
No NO NO you got it all wrong...cassini is not waste of money...you must be thinking of the ISS or the Shuttle program or hubble (well hubble wasn't a waste of money...but if they try to save it instead of making a differnt one which attepmts to do NEW science then that would be a waste of money).
stendec@gmail.com
See, for example, these field test photos of the camera in the Arizona area. as they say:
To construct any of these projections, the direction of every pixel in each of the three imagers was measured and expressed as a nadir and azimuth angle in a spherical coordinate system centered on the imager in question. Parallax due to coordinate center offsets was ignored. The distortion due to the optical systems was removed using an empirically-derived unwarping function. The images were projected onto a mosaicking plane using one of several projection algorithms (mercator, conic, stereographic or gnomonic) defined below, causing the various images to be spliced together.)
oooooooo.... Pictures.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
. Terragen, a freeware program that converts the basic brightness data in aerial pictures into a topographical map, to generate the ground-level vista was used.
Posting to Slashdot did not know, Master Yoda was.
You are aware, I hope, that Teragen is closed source freeware, with some pro features available only by payment...
Your taxes paid for this, they hardly own the data.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It is very cool to see that this has been written up in Nature, however I'm a bit disparaged by the fact that the chat room that is mentioned here is not mentioned by name.
:)). If you happen to drop by, I go by JPL-Justin in channel - say hello!
If you would like to meet some of the folks who do this sort of thing, you should stop by #space on irc.freenode.net. #space is an unofficial channel for discussion of space-related science, exploration, and events.
I've been around the channel since it split from #maestro, (a community of space enthusiasts who use the NASA Maestro program) and it is an exciting place to hang out during a space event.
I would also like to note that I presented the Huygens imagery last friday afternoon to 100+ community members at Cornell University. Despite the fact that Cornell has many scientists on the Cassini mission, the #space channel was by far the fastest way to get the newly released data. If it was out on the net to be found - someone in there would find it.
If you're interested in space it's a great place to go to answer questions or just to chat (flame wars about policy are kept in #space_politics
Cheers,
Justin Wick
- One stunning landscape was produced by Mike Zawistowski, a freelance computer-repair expert based in Boston, Masschusetts, who describes himself as a "casual astronomy buff".
They're not trying to horn in on anyone's "peer-review journal", their just having fun with the raw data. Their imaginations are fired up -- thats the sort of thing that pushes human being to want to explore new frontiers. Why take that away from them? The excitement generated by this sort of thing that causes us to push for more - maybe even translating into more dollars being spent in order to learn even more in the long run.Zawistowski used Terragen, a freeware program that converts the basic brightness data in aerial pictures into a topographical map, to generate the ground-level vista shown at the top of this page.
He used information from one of Huygens' aerial photos (see second picture), and worked out the correct scale based on its resolution - about 20 to 40 metres per pixel. "The final image was adjusted for colour, with some artistic licence for dramatic effect," he says of his Titan landscape.
Zawistowski hopes that when the radar data from the probe are released, his pictures can be adjusted to make them much more accurate.
"There are lot of resources available to the scientifically curious," says Zawistowski. "This permits many talented amateurs who are technically savvy to participate on some level, even if they are not
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Well, if you look at the animations it *seems* like there is some flow from left to right across the frame. About 60% of the way up it looks like there is a stream bed down which fluid is flowing. The rocks look like they are sitting in hollows that are consistent with this interpretation.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
http://img92.exs.cx/img92/8886/slashterrain5gk.jpg
Look I beat the scientists to generating an 3d image from a 2d image.... can you guess what it is?
Maybe you've missed the earlier criticism regarding wikipedia (on slashdot)?
;-)
I fear it wasn't the best of choices to use the wikipedia as an example of scientific accuracy.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Its not accurate without real height data, which would come from Cassini radar sweeps. The light/dark pixels only tell you so much about height. Once the site is known, you can expect Cassini to make some detailed surveys of that area, which in turn with tell us what is what.
However, on to the image quality - in hindsight could that have been done better?
I realise there are constraints - 80's hardware, limited batteries, 8k bit channel, etc, but here are my casual observations..
Much higher CCD's were available at the time - the probe itself had a 1 megapixel unit. Low res data could have been transmitted during descent, but hi-res data could have been stored & broadcast after landing. As it is, the radio spent a lot of time sending identical images of the landing site. Furthermore, why the assumption that the probe will quit on landing? Why not switch off Huygens when Cassini dissapears below the horizon, and switch it on for the next day? (titan's day is 16 days long..) The batteries lasted many hours after the landing, and the craft did cruise in standby mode for 16 days, so this should have been possible.
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
During the 1989 Voyager flyby of Neptune, we grabbed screenshots of NASA TV, cleaned them up and put them on the Net and usenet. At that time JPL had a one-year embargo on raw data, so that the principal scientists who spent years in these projects could analyze and publish them first. JPL has become much more generous since then.
Hits you with a baseball bat and runs with ass shut
I'm surprised they haven't been charged with signal theft and terrorism yet.
Absoloutley.
Making the raw data available is necessary for good science. The agencies should be applauded.
The fact that someone manages to have some fun / do some science with the raw images is a testament to the value they are getting from their tax dollar.
As far as science goes....the fact that there is so much data to analyze, coupled with the positive attitude of the agencies towards release, means that it is common place for people who did not gather the data to make discoveries about it. In such cases both parties deserve credit. Doing it any other way would set us back. The situation has some analogies with open source vs. closed software.
you whiney cunts
These independent image analysis efforts are laudable and interesting but seem to lack the psychological aspects. I think what many lay-people want most from these images is a sense of what it would look like to them if they were there themselves standing on the titanscape. This is much more complex than just stiching the images together and has a lot to do with how the brain processes visual information. For example, although the colors in the images are all pretty orange, the way the brain perceives color relies in part on subtracting out the background and seeing the _relative_ color of objects in the field of view. Also, the total level of illumination has not been defined (there was some speculation that daylight on titan would be like full moonlight on Earth), and this will influence both the spatial resolution and color perception that a human (even with dark-adapted eyes) would see. Has anyone tried to take these psychological/neurological factors into account when generating these processed images?
Your taxes (or actually, some European's taxes, and they just love paying taxes over there) may have paid for the mission, but scientists still often get exclusive use of the data from things like HST runs for the first 6-12 months. If they decide to release as soon as they get the raw data, that's more a courtesy than your right as a taxpayer, and for which they can be rightly applauded. You're obligated to have the material made available to you; what format, how timely, and any "reasonable" distribution charges (especially considering raw data these days can run into the terabytes) are subject to all sorts of efforts at cost recovery and other bureaucratic mumbojumbo. (Just trying ordering USGS data some time.)
...you can't blame the NASA guys for being slow, after all they had to go to work!!!!!
Shouldn't that be Titangen?
You must think in Russian.
Underwhelming and disappointing pictures lead to public apathy. I sure hope someone renders these images in more detail than what are provided in the link.
I find it really exciting that they took the bother to include a sonic probe on the lander. Cool to hear offworld sounds, even if it's full of static and noise. I was really disappointed when I heard no Star Trek "tingling" atmosphere noises, though...
In order for these renders to be accurate, the pictures taken would need to be elevation maps. If the changes in surface brightness were due to material, texture, or shadow, rather than due to changes in elevation, how is that in any way representative of the surface of Titan?
If you take a picture of a mountain from space, half will be nice and bright, the other half with be cloaked in dark, but obviously there isn't a gigantic plateau with a huge pit right next to it!
Change in brightness is only useful if the image is an elevation map, and we don't know if the raw data were indeed elevation maps, so the images could have mountains where there are none, and MOST LIKELY do!
I know it's rendered, but is that supposed to be liquid water?
I'm behind the curve here, and this is off topic, but "whoa!"
Liquid water implies a very tight temperature range. Is Titan that habitable?
[YARANT]
;^)
Okay "breathing air", was sort of a reference to the "turf" wars in science, but the point is still valid.
Assuming part of a person's "not-at-will" employment contract compensation clause with the government or a subcontractor of the government agency is to get a short term exclusive access to otherwize public data for a limited amount of time as a "bonus" or "fringe-benefit" I agree that this would be appropriate. Short-term exclusive access to data by an employee of the government, however, is not a "right". In the current social compact regime, you work, you get compensated with what you agree to. You do not have the right to "certain" compensation unless it is in an employment contract or written in the law.
Certainly, some things are customary and serve as attractions for employment (e.g., getting December 25th off, for example), but there is no "right" to get December 25th off.
Can you not see the difference?
I doubt you are suggesting there is such a law or there should be such a law. I assume you are arguing that this is customary for attracting employment. Well, tough. Most people work hard, most people have to be in competion with people working harder faster or (yikes!) better...
Certainly science costs a scientist's time, but they are current PAID for that time. I think you are saying, this "bonus" compensation of exclusive access should also be PAID and it is a right, but I don't belive that is the case.
If I dare make another analogy, it's almost like saying "I spent a few extra hours on my computer at home to spell check an important presentation on off hours, therefore, I have a right give the presentation and get the glory." Maybe you will, maybe you won't, but it's certainly not a "right" and not even "customary". Maybe someone is better at the task or maybe someone asks the boss (or the person paying the bills) before you do and you get to sit in the back of the room an unacknowledged contributor to a group effort.
Every significant enterprise will require the effort of lots of unacknowledged people and it's not easy to split up the spoils of a successful enterprise. Science is not different in this respect. Perhaps this is how Mr. Stallman feels about Mr. Torvalds? I don't know for sure, but life is always a little bit of competition and sometimes from unexpected places and we all have to deal with it.
In addition, arguably, the unsung "public" put a lot of sweat and tears to earn the tax money that is spent on big science, what about them? I guess the needs of the many have to take seconds behind an individual's career in your world...
[/YARANT]
"They were also good enough to share the raw data."
Thanks for misquoting me, jerk. That was a comma, not a period. I never said they own the data, or more specifically they own the data more than any other taxpayer. What I said was this:
"They were also good enough to share the raw data with the general public, not just their finished analysis."
The money was spent to gather the data and recieve the final analysis. What's more, in science the raw data is usually only available for peer-review, that is by other scientists. There's nothing new about that it's been that way for several decades. So making the raw data available to anyone with web access is a courtesy, and more than most research group, publicly or privately funded would do.
Sorry to spoil your anti-government rant with a reasonable perspective....
In this case, the corporations involved happen to be a unique form of corporation, commonly called government agencies. They are responsible to, and owned by shareholders (otherwise known as taxpayers). Those shareholders collectively hold ALL rights to ALL data from the missions. In this special case of a government agency, the public is the shareholders, and the public has all rights to all of the data. The scientists themselves sold any rights they had when they cashed the cheques paid by the public to support the work. It's really no different than working for a private corporation, but instead of developing scientific data for commercial application, these folks are doing it to increase the knowledge well of the population in general. The fact remains, the population is providing the resources to do the job, and the population as a whole owns the results, the scientists are merely 'hired help' tasked with aquireing the data in the first place.
It never ceases to amaze me how quick many members of the scientific community are to jump up on the bandwagon and try claim ownership for various things they deal with. They forget one very important detail, they are just employees of the general public, with thier snouts planted firmly in the public trough, living off the sweat of those who actually produce the real stuff that makes this economy run with enough surplus to support them. Our economy is productive enough we can afford the luxury of investing in 'pure science', but never lose sight of the hard fact, it is a luxury, and not part of the basic necessities of life.
When these scientists plan and fund an entire mission out of thier own pocket, on thier own time, they can have all the rights/glory they want with the data it collects. As long as thier work involves collecting a government paycheque, along with things like retirement benefits etc, then they better not lose sight of one hard fact of reality, they are just employees of the public, with no special rights of any kind to the work they do on the employers time/nickel.
The general public is rapidly becoming much more sophisticated with regard to processing raw data, and they are rapidly making it very clear to the agencies they support financially. We paid for the data, so let us have access to it. The availibility of mass produced computer equipment has made it within the reach of the hobbiest to do processing on raw data themselves, and do it they will.
What the folks within the agencies should be noting with a big smile these days, is the zeal with which the public grabs at the data when it becomes available. The zeal with which the public grabs for the probe data is direct positive feedback from the owners of the data as to it's value, and the desire to continue with programs collecting this type of data. There is a direct cause/effect relationship here, that will ultimately drive further funding for future missions. If there was NOT a mad grab for raw data, and a mad flurry of folks starting to work with that data to do various things with it (purely scientific or otherwise), then everybody involved in the program better start having serious thoughts about career choices, because a lack of shareholder (public) interest will definitely have a dramatic effect on funding for future missions.