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by vixen99·11y ago·view on hn ↗
It had better be given that the public paid for it at a minimum cost of 1.4 billion Euros for the strictly European input.
3 comments
Much of the Rosetta data is under embargo, because the instruments were not paid for by ESA but private organisations like Max Planck Institute.

Hence the paucity of hard data released to the public; the organisations have first dibs on the data to make their money back through publications and in attracting research funding.

As an example: http://www.mps.mpg.de/1979387/MPS-Beteiligungen_an_Rosetta

Basically, ESA provide the bus on which the science kit rides.

As an EU tax-payer I've raged against this in the past but that's just the way it is.

Source: direct question on this matter that I put to an ESA PR at a public lecture about Rosetta.

It will be given to the public -- in contrast to 99% of scientific research results published by private companies like Elsevier making you pay $30 per article (or less, doesn't matter: you must pay to get the results of a research funded by you).

Edit: most of it will be, not everything, as I've just found out.

Completely agree. It is outrageous. I am researching a topic at the moment and expected to pay £20 for the privilege of viewing a paper (with work funded as you say, by the taxpayer) published in 1960.

As to the project, the cost (open to correction by all means) was 1.4 billion. Downvote if you like; evidently this is my big mistake for not understanding that facts are apparently unwelcome hereabouts. If people assume that by mentioning this sum I am necessarily disapproving of the project then they are simply wrong and indeed had not one iota of evidence to suppose that. Now I know better - 'I must not mention the cost in case something thinks I am moaning about it'.

Just let me know what you need. I'm happy to forward to you anything I can get through my university access. I'm sure others here are willing to do the same so we should have most things covered.
Yes, it would have been much much better for us Europeans to use that money to subsidize our agriculture a bit more... /s