151–160 of 197 posts
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Yes, I get that. But it seems that performance has barely improved since the 1970s despite the massive gains in telecommunication efficiencies since then. Or is the SNR so poor that even 1970s era technology was able to be close to the limit?
These are physical restrictions, not technological.
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You could have the facility move constantly to keep the facility straddled across the sunlight line. At the equator, this would require constantly moving at about 7 mph, though you could reduce the speed necessary by moving to higher latitudes.
Yeah but if you break down...
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In addition to lack of solar energy, I wonder if nuclear power source is necessary to keep batteries or other electronics warm enough to function properly. Conversely, on Titan, we won't need to worry about heat sinks as everything is kept at ~94K in a bath of liquid and frozen methane. Perhaps in a few hundred years AWS's most popular region for intensive compute will be under Titan's methane sea. High spin up cost,…
That's a good point - the "waste" heat from an RTG (which is only about 5% efficient) is very useful in those extreme cold temperatures.
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These are physical restrictions, not technological.
What about the laser technology NASA is developing? That should be a lot faster than current radio based technology?
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Appears in 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson.
They move the whole city around the planet at 7mph!! 10/10 would recommend
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To put it into perspective: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/titan/overvi... According to this (at the time of reading) a one way trip at the speed of light is ~75 minutes, so you will have approximately two and a half hours of ping. Ouch. Still, it raises an interesting question: how would a hypothetical Earth-Titan network protocol work?
Can't do much about the time it takes light to get here, so I guess the answer is we'd have to learn to love 75 minute ping :)
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This paper company was founded 771 AD: https://www.shinise.ne.jp/j_kyoto/voices/vol/48/48-d.html It's not even the longest-lived company in the world. This construction company was founded in 578 AD and continuously operated until 2006 when it was bought by a larger company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi 100 years ago was only 1919 -- here are some random companies from 1919 that I found on Wikipedia…
A company lasts just 11 years on average on the S&P 500 now. Companies are surviving for shorter time periods now then they used to.
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I find it kind of funny that you think AWS will still be around in a hundred years.
This paper company was founded 771 AD: https://www.shinise.ne.jp/j_kyoto/voices/vol/48/48-d.html It's not even the longest-lived company in the world. This construction company was founded in 578 AD and continuously operated until 2006 when it was bought by a larger company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi 100 years ago was only 1919 -- here are some random companies from 1919 that I found on Wikipedia…
Bayer (1860s Germany), Johnson & Johnson (1886), 3M (1902), the Coca-Cola Company (1892), IBM (1911), HP (1939), Mitsubishi (1870), Wells Fargo (1852).
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In certain regions on Mercury the temperature stays within 1 degree of room temperature less than a meter underground. http://einstein-schrodinger.com/Mercury_temperature.pdf It’s actually relatively habitable. http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html
> In fact, if we delay until the distant future, or even 50 years or so, such an effort probably will become impossible. This is because us humans will consume the Earth's non-renewable energy and mineral resources almost completely within the next 50-100 years, severely reducing our discretionary income for costly activities such as space travel. I wonder when that was written...
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You could have the facility move constantly to keep the facility straddled across the sunlight line. At the equator, this would require constantly moving at about 7 mph, though you could reduce the speed necessary by moving to higher latitudes.
Appears in 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson.