lost history

[kmusser]

Thanks to shamino1 for the link, passing it along since I know several of you work at Goddard:
Wired article about hunt for lost Apollo 11 footage.

Comments

[fuzzface00.livejournal.com]

I used to work at Goddard, 1986-1990. I miss it sometimes, but I'm not fond of being a Contractor... I could go on about that for a few days.

Unfortunately, this story is a tragic tip of the iceberg. Various NASA projects generated tons of data over the years and only a fraction of it is readily available today. The rest has been lost, is in storage, is in a format we no longer understand, destroyed, etc. NASA isn't alone in having those type of problems, but how many organizations have the kind of data that NASA has?

In times past, some of that "moldy old data" has been reviewed and helped confirm current science. When I was at GSFC, they discovered that we had data from a 1970's weather satellite that allowed a better measurement and history of the Ozone Hole over the South Pole. Likely a lot of that data would still be useful today, if it could be used.

I don't know what the solution is. The National Space Science Data Center was tasked (at one point) with trying to keep those datasets available for use. Data recovery efforts like the ones described in the article was part of their mission. Even in the Late 1980's they were having trouble keeping up. How do you read a seven track tape when they do not make drives for it anymore ? Where do you keep all the conversion equipment for the myriad of formats used over the years ? I can imagine it hasn't gotten any better since then.

(If you have a tough time imagining it, consider the following: You have a huge collection of videotapes that are slowly degrading no matter how hard you try to preserve them. Converting them to DVD is very time consuming and doesn't always work properly. Oh, and your Video Tape Recorder just broke and you can't find a store to sell you another new one. Where do you find spare parts ? Where do you find someone who can repair this ? What if you have more tapes than there are hours in a year ? Now multiply that by the size of the Federal Government and you get the idea what they are up against.)

On top of that is the baseline problem that it is easy to get people interested in a launch happening today, but they miss the importance of the data produced by that launch because that isn't the exciting flashy part, nor does it bear fruit quickly. Unfortunately we are fighting human nature in that case.

I suspect every other Science or Statistical organization in the Federal Government has a similar problem. Sure, NASA is the flashy poster child of the problem, but they aren't alone. You have to wonder how much science has been lost because we haven't taken the time to preserve it properly.

Library of Alexandria anyone ?