Google Forms Partnership With NASA

jangobongo writes "Google said on Wednesday that it plans to partner with NASA on space research projects. The new partnership will involve R&D on biotechnology, information technology and nanotechnology, as well as supercomputing. The news article notes some of the mutual benefits: "Google stands to gain from learning about NASA's supercomputers, which could come in handy as the Mountain View search engine compiles even bigger indexes of information and video. NASA leaders cited the benefits of getting access to Google's search expertise to pick out nuggets of information from the volumes of data streaming back from satellites and human space launches."" This story might seem familiar to you. Consider it a public service: if I didn't screw up occasionally, a lot of angry readers would have no other way to vent their rage in a safe environment.

Comments

So it wasn't a joke after all

[scenestar]

Sign me up for G.C.H.E.E.S.E.

http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html

Should Be Open Bid

[geomon]

The government should only form alliances with industry where there are no other obvious partners. While Google may have a lead on search technology, opening up the partnership process to include Microsoft and Yahoo! would benefit the government more than sole sourcing.

Competition for government partnerships is always better than just selecting the current industry lead. The US government did that with office suites and is now paying a hefty price for that decision.

Re:Should Be Open Bid

[Brendor]

I wrote this reply to the previous article but thought it might be relevant here as well. Google's "robustly academic" corporate culture of as well of their product offerings are well suited to NASA in particular.

"Considering how much data NASA has to process, I think Google's tools fit right in . . ."

I remember a TV news piece about NASA not having the capability to process the data in it s collection due to the bandwidth of the tape backup system at the time and the shelf life and quantity of the tapes. This is the sort of data set that Google seems to look for in any market they can conceive of.

Since this data is work of the federal government it should be Public domain as well. The Public would benefit form having such information available. Anything from videos of all previous shuttle missions (NASA TV presented by Google Video) to Galactic Maps, Transcripts and scientific data from unmanned and manned missions going back to the 1950s. (Does NASA (or any other govt. agency) currently offer the data they've collected for the public in usable formats such as excel spreadsheets or other comparable formats that are not primarily publications formats such as PDF or HTML?)

Re:R E P O S T

[djh101010]

Fer crying out loud, its not only a repost, its *still* up on the /. front page!!!

Once again, I saw this before it happened (subscribers see articles before they go "green") and reported it to the "If you see a serious problem with this article, report it to daddypants@slashdot.org". I sent the email, with a link and everything to Zonk's post of the same thing.

Just like last time, nothing happened. No acknowledgement of the email (automated _or_ human), and the dupe went out.

Hey editors, does anyone read the daddypants emails? Am I wasting my time? I mean, if you're not going to do anything about it anyway, remove the mailto: link.

Annoyed,
djh101010

Re:instant karma

[benjamin264]

Or repost your comments and see if they get modded the same...

In any event, I really hope that all of this does generate some positive interest in NASA.