Google And NASA To Collaborate On Technology

Mike Peel writes "The BBC reports that Google will be assisting NASA with new technology from a campus facility in the NASA Research Park at Moffett Field." From the article: "As part of the venture, Google will develop one million square feet of real estate at the Nasa Ames research centre. The centre, built in 1939, has been at the heart of the US space program for many years, conducting research into the Apollo moon missions between 1963 and 1972. Nasa recently unveiled plans to make another moon landing by 2020. Examples of areas of potential collaboration include the development of new types of remote sensors and improving analysis of engineering problems." More details available from the official press release and MSNBC.

Moffett

[BWJones]

One million square feet! is certainly a lots of real estate space (no pun intended) that in the South Bay Area has to be worth a not insignificant chunk of change. Granted, Moffett field sits on an amazing amount of land and although I have not been back to the base for years, I imagine it is still some pretty choice real estate that just so happens to be right up the road from Google.

It also might be of interest to note that Moffett is right next door to a former NIMA (NRO) facility and given Google's interest in mapping the surface of the Earth and other remote sensing activities, might be pretty convenient.

Google never should have went public

[Anita Coney]

Google wants to do so many cool things, from scanning the world's books to helping us in space. But now that it's public it's only a matter of time before the stock holders start pulling back the reins. In the narrow view of the stock market it doesn't matter if you help people. It doesn't even matter if you make a profit. The sole thing that matters to the stock market is whether you're growing. That's it. If you're not focusing on that, you're out.

Re:I'm sure the kids at Google are bright but

[ZachPruckowski]

Well, to make that big search engine, they needed a big supercomputer, which they built themselves by networking a lot of computers together, didn't they? I mean, they might beat NSA at raw computing power. And a supercomputer, programmed differently, could run all sorts of high-power simulations and could correlate all sorts of sensory data.

Then there is the fact that Google is so adaptable that simply having them on the team gives NASA a boost. Google has done pretty much everything Internet related in the last few years, and that requires organizational flexibility. Maybe NASA wants to get an idea of how they work?

Re:I'm sure the kids at Google are bright but

[Mr. Underbridge]

And a supercomputer, programmed differently, could run all sorts of high-power simulations and could correlate all sorts of sensory data.

"Could" is irrelevant. The processing power is a lot cheaper and easier to come by than the people necessary to do the science. I'm really not feeling this one.

Then there is the fact that Google is so adaptable that simply having them on the team gives NASA a boost.

In PR, maybe, which seems to be what they need most. It's almost like the NASA PHB's were sitting around, and one said "What can we do to be cool again like 1969?" and one thought for a while before the light bulb illuminated, and said "You know who's cool? Google! Let's have them run the place!" Hmmmm....maybe not.

Google has done pretty much everything Internet related in the last few years, and that requires organizational flexibility

That's the kind of PHB thinking that takes you down the crapper. So why not let them build a new medical institute, since they've done so well with the internet? Why not let them solve the problem of global warming, they've done so well with the internet? I'll tell you - because they're not qualified, and success in one field doesn't imply success in another.

Maybe NASA wants to get an idea of how they work?

Then they should hire Page as a consultant, not let them take half the place over.

Is Google the New Bell Labs?

[rlp]

Bell Labs was heavily involved in the Apollo moon landing program. In both a technical capacity and a project management capacity. I remember early on, going to a meeting for new employees where all the senior managers introduced themselves and talked about their background. Years earlier, most of them had worked together on the Apollo moon landing.

Google has formed Google Labs including a lot of folks formerly from Bell Labs. It's interesting that NASA is working with them on the Moon Landing 2.0. Hopefully, without the bureaucracy of an AT&T, Google Labs will be more successful at translating R&D into marketable product. So far, their early track record looks very promising.

It is a merger...

[insignificant1]

"...bio-info-nano convergence..." -Google Press Release [google.com]

A merger of the buzzwords that drive the investors of today.

Google Moon, Google Mars (, Google Galactic?)

[asky]

As you head out into the solar system and attempt to settle elsewhere, one of the problems is that you won't be able to google a query back to Earth and get a lightning fast response. (Well, uh, perhaps as fast as lightning, but that could be seconds, minutes, or hours....) You no longer can present every problem to Mission Control and wait for an answer. And you probably will not have trained for every scenario.

Survival of a small colony of smart people on the Moon or Mars could partly depend on taking large portions of your planetary knowledge base with you and looking for solutions that others have figured out but you haven't. (It also is a form of taking your culture with you.) The trick is to do it without rooms of massive power-hungry clusters, but for a smaller group of users. I can imagine Google working with NASA to pull some of these technologies together. Things like nanotechnology, one of the focal points of work at Ames, will be key to making it happen.

Google expandig out of it's domain...why?

[Bitsy Boffin]

Ok, Google is a company based around providing Search services, and they do that well. All thier services are in some way related to information mining (searching), from web search, to geographical search, it's all search in the end.

But what incredible need does NASA have for a partner to provide search? Sure, data mining is a useful tool for NASA I'm sure, but why do they need Google to actually set up shop there with them to do this?

Seems to me like Google is expanding out of it's domain. And that's not usually a good thing. Pick one thing and do it well, don't try to be Jack of all trades.

Re:NASA has needed Google technology for a long ti

[copdk4]

Well, you have gotta understand that Google and NASA work on entirely different types of data:

Google = Web pages/multi-media content that is hyperlinked
NASA = Large relational tables storing petabytes of data from sensors and telescopic readings...

The techniques for mining are different in both cases.. when they talk about "Bio/Nano" it refers to entirely new domain.. Its not as easy as plug-n-play with different domains. Agreed, Google has mastered the algorithms for ranking and extracting data from Web-pages but mining data out of relational streams of data is entirely a different ball game.