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by CGamesPlay 2063 days ago
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?
2 comments
robryk 2063 days ago
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.
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qz2 2063 days ago
Might be a bit lossy :)
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MayeulC 2062 days ago
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.

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1_person 2063 days ago
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

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somesortofsystm 2062 days ago
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.

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