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Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#31

Post by tomp »

somesortofsystm wrote: post #5

I've always wondered about the feasibility of using space for temporary/short-term storage needs. I remember a time when, as a junior developer, I'd log into operations, and hand the operator my tape reel with my work for the day - and she'd go off, mount the spool, and start the streaming, until my files were available in local storage for a few hours, and then .. when logging out, I'd have the operator re-stream th…

Probably the same reason that you don't store drinking glasses by throwing them really high up in the air.

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#32

Post by fit2rule »

Threeve303 wrote: post #23
Chris2048 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying China/Russia got their hands on Military tech by hacking?

This is a prevalent notion in the west. I’m sure there is some truth to it. In the long run, it seems like a great way to underestimate an opponent.

There is no truth to it, because to weapons manufacturers and engineers, the division between "West" and "East" is facile, and a fallacy.

In fact, tech wants to be free to all humans. We are its host.

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#33

Post by MayeulC »

qz2 wrote: post #12
robryk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP doesn't want to store the data on the satellite, but rather use the space in-between as a Friday line storage. The satellite would be a repeater that retransmits what it receives. If it was 20 light minutes away, there would be 40 minutes worth of data in transit, so the whole system could store 40 minutes long circular buffer.

Might be a bit lossy :)

Right, so you have to send CRCs as well.

The nice thing about this scheme is that you don't technically need to send an active repeater: the mirrors on the moon could already serve this purpose.

At the end of the day, it's a tradeoff between the cost of extra storage, the sequential aspect of data retrieval from a delay line, and its energy cost.

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#34

Post by ColanR »

dugmartin wrote: post #25
somesortofsystm wrote: post #5

I've always wondered about the feasibility of using space for temporary/short-term storage needs. I remember a time when, as a junior developer, I'd log into operations, and hand the operator my tape reel with my work for the day - and she'd go off, mount the spool, and start the streaming, until my files were available in local storage for a few hours, and then .. when logging out, I'd have the operator re-stream th…

What is old is new again (just with a much bigger buffer): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory

When there's a 40 (mars) or 80 (jupiter) minute delay that's guaranteed, it sounds like a unique form of a time lock. Put your private pgp key in a 24 hour time delay circuit and guarantee that no one can do a decryption in the interim (long as it's the only copy).

I wonder if 50 years from now there's going to be a blockchain based on that technology (as opposed to the computation or storage based blockchains we have now).

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#36

Post by jandrese »

justicezyx wrote: post #35

DTN once was a fashionable research topic in before 2012, never thought it could actually been implemented.

There was the DTNBone, but without a killer app and with the reference implementation being rather touchy and hard to debug for novices it never really went anywhere.

DTN ended up having some use cases, but they were so narrow that it never really made it out of the lab except for a handful of NASA links and some abortive military applications from people trying to solve the mobile ad-hoc routing problem.

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#37

Post by tzs »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

The protocols are interesting, but it seems to me that point-to-point is more applicable in the vast emptiness that is outer space. Why send a packet to Mars when Jupiter is 5° to the left and I have a clear line of sight to both?

Assume Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and the Sun are all roughly in a line.

Let's call the amount of transmit energy needed to get a signal from Earth to Mars with it having a specified strength at the receiver 1 unit of energy.

Earth to Jupiter would require about 64 units of energy, so from the sender's point of view relaying through Mars saves them a lot of transmit energy.

The transmitter on Mars would need about 49 units of energy to get the signal to Jupiter, bringing the total to about 50 units to get from Earth to Mars.

Whether or not spending 1 unit on Earth and 49 on Mars to relay is actually cheaper than spending 64 units on Earth to go directly will depend on the cost of energy on Mars and Earth.

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#39

Post by Dylan16807 »

somesortofsystm wrote: post #5

I've always wondered about the feasibility of using space for temporary/short-term storage needs. I remember a time when, as a junior developer, I'd log into operations, and hand the operator my tape reel with my work for the day - and she'd go off, mount the spool, and start the streaming, until my files were available in local storage for a few hours, and then .. when logging out, I'd have the operator re-stream th…

Okay, so let's say you get a really good signal between your satellites and manage 1mbps at interplanetary distances.

Even if you get a super cheap launch you just spent tens of millions of dollars on storing... 300 megabytes.

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#40

Post by wmf »

tomp wrote: post #30
chris123 wrote: post #16

Next they'll be saying, Bitcoin will be the interplanetary reserve asset. Then the interstellar. Intergalactic. Universal. Not in our lifetimes, is course. But it's coming.

How will you achieve consensus with years-long communication delays?

The base layer consensus protocol would run at decade speed and would just be used to net out long-term/long-distance differences; most transactions would be on higher-layer systems that settle faster. Charles Stross explains this stuff in Neptune's Brood.
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