[X] My Assistant

[PhilHorzempa]

I want the UMSF community to think about the concept of a Library
devoted to Space History. Perhaps, this is a function that is already
served by the Smithsonian Air and Space facility.

However, what concerns me is that there doen't seem to be one
main repository for all of the fascinating and significant data and
images and stories that I have seen displayed on the UMSF forum.

What does the community think about this concept? What can we
do to foster a library or an institute to serve as a entity devoted to
this subject that is dear to all of our hearts?


Another Phil

[dvandorn]

You know, guys -- this forum is very interesting, yes. It captures an ongoing process of speculation (some learned, some not as learned) about a wide variety of subject matter that falls generally within the topic of UMSF.

But that's mostly what it is -- a process of speculation.

The images that some of our wizards generate for us are mostly kept on other sites, or (in full resolution) only on the given members' computers. And a majority of that imagery is generated from lossy jpg-encoded public releases that aren't good for anything except making pretty pictures from. The small minority of images and other data processed from the PDS releases is another matter -- but those are in the definite minority on this site.

I'm not saying it's not worth archiving the process. It's a fascinating example of interaction on a mostly scientific-process kind of level. But, seriously -- we're not, most of us, professionals in these fields. And those of our little band who are professionals are documenting their work in more permanent forms, anyway. (Actually publishing them, in books and professional periodicals, etc., etc.)

I guess my point is that, while this forum is a wonderful experience for most of us, great history it probably ain't. Worrying about whether my pearls of wisdom, as embodied in my 1,000-plus posts here, will be saved for future generations, well... it just doesn't keep me up at night.



-the other Doug