wmartin@ALMSA-2.ALMSA (Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI) (11/14/85)
Would it be possible to feed the SPACE Digest with any NASA press releases or reports, if they are available at some stage in their preparation in an electronic form, related to current activities? We have seen the regular media neglect the spece missions more and more (this is inevitable as they become more common, and actually, I suppose, desirable, as we make space-based activities a normal and ordinary part of human actions). I would think that NASA would still be preparing info or reports about the results of shuttle missions and other space activities, and such could be "narrowcasted" to those of us interested in the subject via this electronic medium. If they exist in an on-line form on a machine connected into the Internet in some way, could it be made a standard practice to release these via electronic mail to this list at the same time as they are released on paper through more traditional channels? Any NASA types out there -- please pass this on to your PR people. (Send it in as a suggestion and make a few bucks! That's fine with me!) Regards, Will Martin US Army Materiel Command
eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya) (11/15/85)
> Would it be possible to feed the SPACE Digest with any NASA press releases or > reports, if they are available at some stage in their preparation in an > electronic form, related to current activities? > > Any NASA types out there -- please pass this on to your PR people. > (Send it in as a suggestion and make a few bucks! That's fine with me!) > > Regards, Will Martin > US Army Materiel Command I have high respect for your suggestions Will. This has been proposed to me, and I will try to answer your questions about the problems we have. 1) Foremost. The money which goes into the space agency goes (obviously) to project oriented research. PR is an after fact. I have been working with the Ames people recently to get some TRs published. Our publication people are all heavily overworked and using obsolete tools. At Ames, we just hard an NBI system installed, but insite training was poor, networking between them does not exist, and the money is not there. Functions such as this come third to projects preceded by research and so forth. I think most large bureacracies are like this. Also, none of the PR branches have laser printers. Use of the word LASER in the government implies numerous safety rules which these departments don't deal with [another story]. This illustrates some of our problems. 2) There is quite a bulk of NASA data out there: Voyager status notes, Tech Briefs, Pioneer reports, NASA Activities, etc. Who decides what, how much, and so forth? There is a lot of "junk." I receieved a couple of complaints when I posted NASA Activities. Following the USENET is a major time kill (yeah, tell me something new...). 3) Networks and computers are foreign to large portions of NASA. I am on here by the graces of my management and the graces of a different Division who runs this machine (our Central Computer Facility does not have Unix machines [we actually have an SGI IRIS]). I have been called in my Division chief's office on more than one USENET posting when it came from the net somewhere else back to my management. Information including simple correspondence typically must go thru a clearance cycle [e.g., your voice represents the Agency whether you disclaim things or not.]. Dispersal of information to "foreign" .... worries a lot of people. I cannot accept invitations to speak or present papers based on electronic mail (must have hardcopy with letterhead and 'signature.') I recently visited one research Center (larger than Ames but back East) which had never seen a Mac before. This Center has 2 (two) IBM PCs with all other work done on IBM and other mainframes. Univac would love to sell Ames one of their machines, but they were luck to get two people show up for their presentation. 4) There are, as posted by others, small BBSs at various NASA Centers like Johnson and Goddard. The numbers are available. 5) Roger Noe has written suggesting involvement on internal discussion groups. Al Globius (ames!al) started a local news group on discussing space station design topics, but few local researchers got involved. This brings up problems of propritary information from contractors and vendors, and the possibly of "premature announcement" of ideas which are not policy. It would be nice to spend more time, but back to work. From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: --eugene miya NASA Ames Research Center {hplabs,ihnp4,dual,hao,decwrl,allegra}!ames!aurora!eugene emiya@ames-vmsb
jrd@mit-amt.MIT.EDU (Jim Davis) (11/17/85)
In a previous message Will Martin asked that STS info be posted here. There is already a group dedicated to the Shuttle, it is called net.columbia. STS info should go there. Duplication of subject area should be avoided. -- ARPA:jrd@media-lab.mit.edu Phone: (617)-253-0360
dls@mtgzz.UUCP (d.l.skran) (11/19/85)
After reading this posting, I cannot help but feel that the situation at NASA is little short of tragic. Many indvidual employees where I work apparently have more computing power on their desks than whole divisions of NASA. The notion of a publications department not having a laser printer when you can buy one for under $10,000 dollars is incredible. It sounds like we are almost an entire generation of equipment ahead of you. Dale Skran Trying hard not to reveal too many specifics Not speaking for AT&T.
wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (11/19/85)
In article <39@mit-amt.MIT.EDU> jrd@mit-amt.MIT.EDU (Jim Davis) writes: >In a previous message Will Martin asked that STS info be posted >here. There is already a group dedicated to the Shuttle, it is called >net.columbia. STS info should go there. Duplication of subject >area should be avoided. Heavy sigh... We see here again a lack of realization of what is going on in the Internet environment and with newsgroup/mailing-list gateways. I'm lucky -- I can see net.space and net.columbia at a host where I have limited USENET access; I get the ARPA SPACE Digest at my regular "home" host, mailed to me on the MILNET. Few other people can see this stuff from both viewpoints, however, and it can come and go away for me, too. When I posted that (to which Eugene Miya has written an excellent response explaining why it is unlikely that it will happen), I referred explicitly and specifically to the SPACE Digest on the ARPA side. (For me, it is much more reliable and long-term available than USENET access.) The SPACE Digest has a gateway between it and USENET's net.space newsgroup. This recently was put back into operation after being down for a while. There is NOT a gateway between it and net.columbia (the USENET's space-shuttle newsgroup). So, to the ARPA side, which is where I addressed that query, net.columbia might as well not exist, and stuff posted to it is never seen. For maximum exposure, and for distribution to the ENTIRE community, information like I was requesting (reviews of the results of missions, reports on satellites and projects, anything and everything we could get out of NASA) MUST be posted to net.space or sent to the SPACE Digest. It will do no good for the ARPA side to put it on net.columbia. It would be nice to get a one-way gateway feeding net.columbia into the SPACE Digest, but this probably would result in the postings eventually migrating over to net.space, since the software would feed them back through the two-way SPACE Digest <> net.space gateway as new items. In practical terms it means that an ARPA Digest or mailing list can have a single gateway to a USENET newsgroup, and we will have to live within this constraint. To those of you on USENET, pay attention to the header fields when responding to or evaluating a posting you see in net.space (or any other gatewayed newsgroup). If it comes from an ARPA site, and especially if it refers to a "Digest" as the medium, DON'T evaluate it like it was a posting from a USENET site and refer the poster to "more appropriate" newsgroups, which do not exist in that poster's environment. Will Martin UUCP/USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin or ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA