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Most Complete Topographical Map of Earth Complete
An anonymous reader writes "Kudos to NASA and the Japanese trade ministry for mapping 99% of the Earth's surface, surpassing their previous effort, with which the new data will be amalgamated. Apparently, the data will be free to download and use."
That's the Cobra secret base.
It's the hole at the North Pole that leads to the center of the Earth.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
As noted by some. This also has been the most detailed fail.
It's probably the portion of the poles that the orbital inclination didn't allow to be mapped.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
The other 1% is what geographers call the "edge"; the area at which the two sides of the flat earth meet. Mapping both sides of a flat object is easy. Unfortunately mapping the edge is much harder. Just be glad the Earth is flat, not round. Otherwise, there'd be no accurate way to project it onto a piece of paper.
Apparently, the data will be free to download and use.
You know, it never ceases to amaze me that CNN, BBC, Fox News, everybody who's a major player can't link to the original source of information (and Japan's site). One might find the warehouse inventory search tool (note registration required for ASTER global digital elevation model) interesting to play around with if they are interested in the story.
My work here is dung.
How do these folks break even if the data will be free to download and use? A small nominal charge for use or download would not hurt for sure...or would it?
What are you, some kind of RIAA mobster?
In most of Europe, periods are used as thousands-separators in the same way we Americans use commas.
Le français vous intéresse?
1% would be 5.100.720 km, which is 2258x2258 km
It could be 40075.02km long and 127.28km wide.
In fact I'm guessing its the part of the earth covered by the big red stripe that marks the equator.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
They break even by people finding profitable uses for it, which then produce tax revenue. Remember, the agencies doing this are US and Japanese government agencies.
You rang?
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
Fixed that for you...
I am actually using this data for my thesis project in geology. Actually, I'm really excited to learn about this, as the previously available 90m resolution SRTM data isn't really sufficient for my needs.
The SRTM data is all free to download, if you can figure out their poor interface for selecting the files you need. If it wasn't, there would be a lot fewer people working with it. It is the most important data for the analyses I'm doing, and without it my thesis would be a lot different (you can do similar things with regular topographic maps, but essentially only by making hand measurements). I'm really glad that I haven't done a ton of analyses using the SRTM data - now I will wait until I can get my hands on the new stuff.
For a grad student like me with little to no funding for my research and a tiny paycheck from working as a TA, even a nominal fee to download is prohibitive. Even for someone that DOES have funding, paying for stuff like this is extremely annoying. Despite what journal publishers want you to think, science is about openness and sharing of information. Most scientists freely share their data and work with others - even those that work with proprietary data in industry, if you ask them nicely.
And as others have noted - we already paid for it. It's produced by the government.
Now, here's the best part - there is actually 30m data from the SRTM mission. However, except for North America, only the 90m data is available, because it's restricted - not by NASA, but by the DOD. So with this new data they've apparently side-stepped the DOD. NASA and the USGS do seem like they want to get their data out their and accessible by scientists, despite what the DOD may want. I am working on Thailand, so the 30m SRTM data was restricted, but now I should be able to get this new data at the same resolution.