[okfn-discuss] NASA's early lunar images, in a new light - Los Angeles Times

[Mr. Puneet Kishor]

why saving data...





"NASA was so preoccupied with getting an astronaut to the moon ahead  
of the Soviets that little attention was paid to the mountains of  
scientific data that flowed back to Earth from its early space  
missions. The data, stored on miles of fragile tapes, grew into  
mountains that were packed up and sent to a government warehouse with  
crates of other stuff.

And so they eventually came to the attention of Nancy Evans, a no- 
nonsense woman with flaming red hair that fit her sometimes-impatient  
nature. She had been trained as a biologist, but within the sprawling  
space agency she had found her niche as an archivist.

Evans was at her desk in the 1970s when a clerk walked into her  
office, asking what he should do with a truck-sized heap of data tapes  
that had been released from storage.

"What do you usually do with things like that?" she asked.

"We usually destroy them," he replied.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lunar22-2009mar22,0,1783495,full.story



-- 
Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org/
Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org/
Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org/
Science Commons Fellow, Geospatial Data http://sciencecommons.org
Nelson Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/
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