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To: texas booster
“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.

24 posted on 09/25/2010 3:37:24 PM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine .. now it is your turn..)
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To: PIF
Somewhere in an old house that we lived in is a complete set of repair manuals to an IBM 360 that I worked on. Came home with me when the mainframe died (for good), but they were so heavy that I left them in the attic (I think). Probably still there.

The wetware behind the Apollo program and the early exploration programs was the key component. Russian mathematicians did incredible things with substandard hardware and got some good interstellar information. The West had better hardware and a much easier time making sense of pure science.

Knowing the challenges that face us in this endeavor, I still would think that we could copy the raw data to the cloud, along with basic manuals, before the old retirees all pass on.

It could work, at least as an on line museum.

26 posted on 09/25/2010 8:59:53 PM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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