There/is/ a major difference between government subsidised research, in universities or public institutions, and corporate research.
A private company usually won't engage in long term research (there are some exception, like Bell Labs, but they are few), because the stockholders, wanting their money back as fast as possible, aren't interested in the long-term performance of the company they hold. Which also means that some subjects will never be researched (such as the malaria, which only kills a few tens of millions each year...)
Also, the hierachised model of private companies tend not to be adapted to the needs of research : they'd rather focus on narrow, but close to be sellable, fields, rather that search for everything until they stumble on something good. An example of this kind of narrow vision by executives would be Xerox, and its PARC laboratories.
And, lastly, the freedom needed to be doing good research is hard to find in private companies : a researcher has its work overlooked every three months, whereas in France for a CNRS researches, it is only every other year...
Noone talks about this, but to me the difference between intellectual property and CopyRight is quite crucial
That is, in France at least, the author of a work of art has IP over his work ; this is unsellable, so that for all of his life he'll keep some control over his work. Thus, movies/books/records aren't owned by Big Corporations but single artists. The lobbies aren't as big anymore, and the need to push IP up to eternity is much lower.
I hear in the states, the length of IP after ones death is typically the time that has passed since Walt Disney's death...
The only problem is that sending other probes like those into outer space right now is impossible, at least if we want them to go around all the planets : their path was made possible by a very precise position of the planets, which allowed them to "bounce", using the gravity of each of them, from the one to the next with very little propellents.
It might be a long time before it happens again...
Is it just me or the report more or less forgot to talk about the role of the Russian cosmonauts?
They probably spent as much time as the American guy, and probably had as much initiative... isn't CNN a bit chauvinistic in this?
Re:Is Hubble So useful? Adaptive optics is cheaper
on
Happy Birthday Hubble
·
· Score: 1
>You need to build a bigger scope on the ground to get the same amount of light, due to atmospheric lossage. Admittedly it's relatively easy to build big scopes on the ground
big scopes now, with the help of AO, also allow to get more precise photographs
>Hubble can look at (almost) any target at any time, 24 hours a day, and it never rains up there. This means that in sheer amount of observing done, it needs to be compared to at least 3 telescopes, not just one.
Hubble is in space, right. it is also only at an altitude of only 200 kms (or a bit more, I don't know)... so half of its sky is still blocked by the earth. so though it does observe 24 hours a day, it can only look at half the sky at once ; and since it orbites in less than 3hours, the exposure length is much more limited than in the space. And it never rains in northern Chile too, practically (once every 10 years does not count...)
>Good sites for ground telescopes are in increasingly short supply, as cities spread around the world. Many,for instance, now take sites in the Chilean Andes that are about as hard to get to, and work from, as any place on Earth. That ends up costing quite a bit, too.
Most astronomers who use these don't need to be there.
>While, tragically, launch prices are not coming down much yet, we can at least imagine that eventually they will, and space telescopes will be cheaper.
The price of energy does not seem to be decreasing at the moment, so the "eventually" might be far away. OTOH, PR is much easier to do with Hubble than with the ESO and fundings are accordingly higher.
Is Hubble So useful? Adaptive optics is cheaper
on
Happy Birthday Hubble
·
· Score: 2
Well, Hubble is a great project that brings us nice images of the space and etc..., but it is now outdated technology.
with the advent of
adaptive optics It is now easy to get images as neat as those photographied by Hubble, and even better, from the earth.
The advantages being that since it is based on the ground, it is much, much cheaper. No need to send Shuttles in the space or on the moon... Of course it is less spectacular, but it is better for Science. It is currently being installed on the European Space observatory at least.
So Hubble is quite old enough...
This technology supresses the effect of the atmosphere by mesuring the noise it produces and cancelling it. It is explained on the link...
Slashdot Mirror
There /is/ a major difference between government subsidised research, in universities or public institutions, and corporate research.
A private company usually won't engage in long term research (there are some exception, like Bell Labs, but they are few), because the stockholders, wanting their money back as fast as possible, aren't interested in the long-term performance of the company they hold. Which also means that some subjects will never be researched (such as the malaria, which only kills a few tens of millions each year...)
Also, the hierachised model of private companies tend not to be adapted to the needs of research : they'd rather focus on narrow, but close to be sellable, fields, rather that search for everything until they stumble on something good. An example of this kind of narrow vision by executives would be Xerox, and its PARC laboratories.
And, lastly, the freedom needed to be doing good research is hard to find in private companies : a researcher has its work overlooked every three months, whereas in France for a CNRS researches, it is only every other year...
Noone talks about this, but to me the difference between intellectual property and CopyRight is quite crucial That is, in France at least, the author of a work of art has IP over his work ; this is unsellable, so that for all of his life he'll keep some control over his work. Thus, movies/books/records aren't owned by Big Corporations but single artists. The lobbies aren't as big anymore, and the need to push IP up to eternity is much lower. I hear in the states, the length of IP after ones death is typically the time that has passed since Walt Disney's death...
The only problem is that sending other probes like those into outer space right now is impossible, at least if we want them to go around all the planets : their path was made possible by a very precise position of the planets, which allowed them to "bounce", using the gravity of each of them, from the one to the next with very little propellents.
It might be a long time before it happens again...
Don't forget that in Europe wages aren't nearly as high as in America, and prices are quite higher.
So if you go to Europe, be ready to lower your standard of living, since there are many Europeans who will be happy to get a job for much less money.
Is it just me or the report more or less forgot to talk about the role of the Russian cosmonauts?
They probably spent as much time as the American guy, and probably had as much initiative... isn't CNN a bit chauvinistic in this?
>You need to build a bigger scope on the ground to get the same amount of light, due to atmospheric lossage. Admittedly it's relatively easy to build big scopes on the ground
big scopes now, with the help of AO, also allow to get more precise photographs
>Hubble can look at (almost) any target at any time, 24 hours a day, and it never rains up there. This means that in sheer amount of observing done, it needs to be compared to at least 3 telescopes, not just one.
Hubble is in space, right. it is also only at an altitude of only 200 kms (or a bit more, I don't know)... so half of its sky is still blocked by the earth. so though it does observe 24 hours a day, it can only look at half the sky at once ; and since it orbites in less than 3hours, the exposure length is much more limited than in the space. And it never rains in northern Chile too, practically (once every 10 years does not count...)
>Good sites for ground telescopes are in increasingly short supply, as cities spread around the world. Many,for instance, now take sites in the Chilean Andes that are about as hard to get to, and work from, as any place on Earth. That ends up costing quite a bit, too.
Most astronomers who use these don't need to be there.
>While, tragically, launch prices are not coming down much yet, we can at least imagine that eventually they will, and space telescopes will be cheaper.
The price of energy does not seem to be decreasing at the moment, so the "eventually" might be far away. OTOH, PR is much easier to do with Hubble than with the ESO and fundings are accordingly higher.
Well, Hubble is a great project that brings us nice images of the space and etc..., but it is now outdated technology. with the advent of adaptive optics It is now easy to get images as neat as those photographied by Hubble, and even better, from the earth.
The advantages being that since it is based on the ground, it is much, much cheaper. No need to send Shuttles in the space or on the moon... Of course it is less spectacular, but it is better for Science. It is currently being installed on the European Space observatory at least.
So Hubble is quite old enough... This technology supresses the effect of the atmosphere by mesuring the noise it produces and cancelling it. It is explained on the link...