[space] Self-healing materials & astronomy legacy project

[digitalsingularity]

I just encountered two kickstarter campaigns that would probably be up the average Kerbal player's alley. What are they?

1. A university team in Canada is trying to launch a mini satellite to test self-healing materials in microgravity. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/981958479/help-us-build-a-satellite Why is this cool? First off, I'd think a group of students launching a satellite's cool as hell. But, their project has a pretty admirable goal. Micro-meteorites are something that has to be contended with in space. Why not develop materials that can heal themselves to extend the life of whatever we manage to put up into space?
   
2. A team is trying to digitize TONS of old astronomy observations. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/336056946/the-astronomy-legacy-project Why is this cool? 220,000 old glass astronomy plates (about 1000 terabytes of data) is a huge amount of historical data, spanning 130 years.
   

In any case, sorry about the spam, but I just had to share. These guys can use all the help they can get.

[Winter Man]

As cool as the second one is, can't we just take better photos with current equipment for less time and effort?

[Galane]

In space observations, what things looked like years ago is an important resource to see how they've changed over time. That's how items like potentially Earth smushing asteroids and comets are searched for.

"Hmmm, that's an odd dot." *searches through olde photos* "It's been moving." *finds even more olde photos of object* "It's an asteroid. IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US!"

[digitalsingularity]

Galene's correct. Yes, our ability to collect data has grown exponentially with digital imaging and computer image processing, but being able to see a historical record to use as comparison's pretty important. It's how we discovered a lot of asteroids and such.