Google CEO says NASA should become more ‘open source’

Physics Today : Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt gave the first NASA 50th anniversary lecture of 2008 at the Newseum in Washington D.C . earlier today. In his 40 minute speech he urged NASA and other space agencies to consider public-private partnerships and open data standards to drive the next stage of space innovation. Schmidt pointed out how Google Earth , a easy-to-use product that maps the entire planet, relies on satellite photos, topology measurements by a 2000 space shuttle flight, and software from google to develop a new tool that can be used by the general public or research to discover meteor craters, iron-age Celtic hill fortifications in France . “We don’t anticipate all this,” he said. “We just put the information out there, and people use it."Schmidt touched on programs such as Google’s $30 million X-prize lunar challenge to send a probe to the Moon, survive a landing and move on the surface. “Groups will spend millions of dollars more than the value of the prize to win.” he said “Why would we do this?... Because it’s fun."He questioned the high cost of developing mission specific probes, arguing instead for standardized spacecraft platforms that could be adapted to different missionSchmidt also asked why a probe in orbit around a planet couldn’t talk to another probe in the same vicinity. There are lots of reasons why you might want them to communicate he said, including making it easier to transmit data back to Earth. “Isn’t it obvious that spacecraft should have Internet on them, too?” he said.To build a “interplanetary internet” has a number of technical issues that would best be solved by opening up the specifications to the public using licenses similar to that of open source software development.Schmidt closed his speech by commenting that astronaut Alan Bean told him that the one thing astronauts loved to do in space, was to look at the Earth through a porthole. Not everyone is going to get to go to space said Schmidt, but by making NASA’s resources available to the public, and adapted by companies such as google, perhaps we can inspire the next generation of scientists and innovators by providing them the same view as astronauts he said.The talk will be broadcast on NASA TV later today .