[somesortofsystm]

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 the files, and off we go ..

So, why not use space as a large tape buffer? Send the satellites off, 20 minutes of light-speed away, and use the big gap as a cache.

Seems sorta feasible to me, but I guess I'm overlooking some ridiculously obvious factor, such as launch costs, viability, etc. But really, seems like a fleet of satellites spread out around the solar system could function as quite a nice medium ..

[tomp]

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

[Ayesh]

See pingfs. It stores data on ICMP packets.

https://github.com/yarrick/pingfs

[dugmartin]

What is old is new again (just with a much bigger buffer):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory

[ColanR]

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).

[CGamesPlay]

I think the thing that you're missing is that there's no shortage of physical space right here? Said differently, why not build that satellite, load it up, and instead of launching it.... put it in the closet. Get it out when you need it. What advantages does that launch have?

[robryk]

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.

[qz2]

Might be a bit lossy :)

[MayeulC]

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.

[1_person]

I believe he's implying the use of the satellite as a repeater and the intervening space as a delay line

I do not think it's viable in any sense with launch costs but in a hypothetical scenario where you had something 20 light minutes away with a channel that had no better use you certainly could buffer 40 minutes of data on the channel

It is limited here not by the availability of space but the ability to collimate the signal and the availability of power density at the receiver to discern the signal from noise

[somesortofsystm]

Yes indeed, I imagine a situation where some natural resource is modulated such that, 20 minutes later here on Earth, 1000's of Petabytes of data is received such that, if re-transmitted, it will be reliably received across the distance of space. Lets say 20minutes, 1 year, 10 year and ... 1000 year intervals .. might be the line item deals on offer.

Truly a sci-fi concept, inasmuch as I have no idea of the science involved, but I can still imagine some scenario where such valuable data becomes committed to eternal space.

[Dylan16807]

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.

[somesortofsystm]

.. where nobody else can access it.