Mercury Flyby 1 Options

[MarsIsImportant]

40 days and counting. The long wait is almost over!

I wonder whether we will get enough data to test new simulation theories like this one.

http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19...solar-wind.html

What do you expect from this first flyby?

[djellison]

Outreach is certainly part of the mission selection process. However, the rapid release of raw imagery in the MER/Cassini style is certainly not 'virtually free'. Just ask their web teams how much bandwidth they get through.

[tfisher]

Just ask their web teams how much bandwidth they get through.

If it was purely a matter of bandwidth, I would expect they could get google to host for free. (I say google in particular because they most clearly among the internet giants display the attitude of being happy to undertake even expensive projects just to advance their image of being the premier repository of human knowledge, and they show a particular interest in helping the scientific community.) Of course, there are expenses to have a web team at all.

Still I think this kind of decision doesn't really come down to money. The PI and core science team have a strong motivation to try to maximize the amount of scientific credit they personally get, and openness with data is viewed as decreasing their advantage over competing scientists. I think that is still the real story.

[Rob Pinnegar]

The PI and core science team have a strong motivation to try to maximize the amount of scientific credit they personally get, and openness with data is viewed as decreasing their advantage over competing scientists. I think that is still the real story.

That's probably true, and a good way of addressing it would be to determine whether anyone on the Cassini team has lost credit for something because of the existence of the Raw Images page. If that hasn't happened, the Messenger team could rest a bit easier about it.

In addition, I don't recall having seen anything on UMSF that would indicate that our discussions here had taken anything away from the Cassini team. There have been a few occasions when things got posted and discussed here before they showed up on the Cassini web site, or in a conference abstract volume. These included the re-discovery of the ring spokes, and the changes in the D Ring. That didn't seem to have any really serious negative ramifications.

It's probably inevitable that, sooner or later, someone is going to try to jump the gun and take advantage of one of the Raw Images pages. But then they'd have to try to get it through peer review and that could pose problems for them. Anyone remember those guys who claimed to have found pools of water on Mars the other year?...