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My father helped design true 25-year mag tape for use at CERN, NASA and other projects that would generate enormous data tracks that would take years to decipher.

With the low cost of cloud storage, why couldn't we move this old data out to the cloud, with basic instruction manuals and compilers?

I understand that it might be petabytes of data that needs to be stored, but that just isn't that much money compared to the value of acquiring the data first hand.

And it could be done before all of the people who know the computer languages and formats have all passed on.

As hard as it will be to replace the Pioneer data streams, it is even harder to replace the human ingenuity that created it in the first place.

“With the low cost of cloud storage, why couldn't we move this old data out to the cloud, with basic instruction manuals and compilers?”

We could... good idea. However, you will have to drag many of the old timers out of assisted living or retirement homes. The manuals are likely in some used book store. The tricks of the trade only the old timers knew... and those aren't in the books.

Then there are huge amounts of photo negatives and films that are stored some where or are in the process of being thrown out, or erased. Legend has it there are high def films taken during the landings, but never released (the low-res TV in those days would not have shown any new info) and so have been lost or destroyed.

There was a recent case of this (not the one in the story) dealing with lunar data from the Apollo days. Most was erased before anyone thought to save it.