Is Google going to space?
December 20, 2006 Google and NASA first announced their intentions to get together in September 2005. At that time, the expected fruits of the relationship seemed, at least to the lay person, to be mostly high-level: data processing and management, user-interface development, and “bio-info-nano convergence” that could lead to pretty major results like new sensors and space-travel technology. The effect of the partnership on the common man was almost a gloss-over. In December 2006, the effect on the common man is a central focus. A much-hyped announcement on December 18 has brought the “Sweet!” factor of this partnership to the forefront: You’re going to be able to do flyovers in space as easily as you can perform a search on Google. The plan is for NASA to feed all sorts of data into Google’s technology infrastructure, and Google in turn will create new tools to fully utilize the NASA data in a user-friendly interface. A lot of this data — images, videos and tracking information compi
