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Hackers In Space: Designing A Ground Station
An anonymous reader writes with some new information on the happenings of the Hacker Space Program. From the article: "At the Chaos Communication Camp 2011 Jens Ohlig, Lars Weiler, and Nick Farr proposed a daunting task: to land a hacker on the Moon by 2034. The plan calls for three separate phases: Establishing an open, free, and globally accessible satellite communication network, put a human into orbit, and land on the Moon. Interestingly enough, there is already considerable work being done on the second phase of this plan by the Copenhagen Suborbitals, and Google's own Lunar X Prize is trying to spur development of robotic missions to the Moon. But what about the first phase? Answering the call is the 'Shackspace,' a hackerspace from Stuttgart, Germany, who've begun work on an ambitious project they're calling the 'Hackerspace Global Grid.'"
It's not that cool. No biggie. Other hackers will probably want to skip it.
Geeks In Space?
Otherwise, why call this hacking?
Engineering, anyone?
Simple question: where are they going to get the billions of dollars required to put a man on the moon? The physical world isn't like the software world, where things are often shared freely. Perhaps it'll be a little different in 2034, but I doubt anyone's going to build a lunar module with a 3D printer and some free plans from the internet.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
disclaimer: I'm a satellite telecom engineer.
What these guys don't know about satellite telecom could fill a swimming pool. "A open, free and globally accessible satellite communications network"? Sure. Except for the free part, it already exists. With a properly designed VSAT terminal (either C or Ku band) anywhere that's not beyond 83 degree latitude can get broadband net access. Why is VSAT service not cheap? It costs $200 million to launch a 6000 kilogram satellite into geostationary orbit, and the satellites lasts on average 12 to 16 years. The $200m satellite has less aggregate data capacity than a fiber optic cable the diameter of a pencil. Installing a 1.2 meter Ku-band VSAT terminal with DVB-S2 compliant TDMA modem (iDirect Evolution series, for example) is not rocket science, but proper service starts at $400/month and up.
If they're trying to push a large amount of bandwidth through small, cheap low earth orbit satellites I believe they're going to run into some fundamental engineering constraints (satellite power budget, shannon limit, the fact that two axis tracking antennas are expensive).
One of my avatars lives on the moon. He doesn't like it, though, because he's agoraphobic.
Step #1) Improve HAM bandwidth for data transmissions to/from space.
On a good day my old 14.4k modem is faster then the throughput I can get on packet radio.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
... see, children, the difference between nerds and non-nerds may be as small as the one between 'ck' and 'g'.
you used the word "kilogram". Everybody knows that only Americans launch stuff, and they launch pounds. Except for Mars explorers, then they launch bricks.
-- Terry
Would it be possible to simply connect the Earth and Moon with a cable that vehicles could traverse? Yes some technologic problems to overcome but in principle?
This idea is not all that smart. When the point is going to reached that a satellite network is actually needed, even with the ground station untouchable (just for the sake of argument), there are two words that make this argument invalid:
"Satellite Killers"
Happy to help
We all would be glad to hop on the HGG, in fact it would be an ultimate experience (not to mention a chance to jump on the lunar surface :P ).
no more SOPA, IP Act and sh!t. No more chaos and flaming of each others. Open Information sharing. Pure eternal peace. period.
This is exactly of what was required for the beginning of the Global Hacker Space aka Pirate Space :D 8)
+1
Why the fixation on landing on the moon? It is as if people are trying to re-live the glory days of the 1960's. Why go down another gravity well after you have so arduously climbed out of one. The moon is only marginally more hospitable than empty outer space. Mars is only slightly better. Terraforming will take too long and possibly unethical. If mankind managed to make space travel cheap and energy-efficient, then we must be truly spaceborne, the Unbound. Outerspace will be our country, the universe will be our borders and mankind will be our nation.
Don't think of this as 'free internet in space.' The internet model, with it's simple dumb-endpoint packet-switching, isn't going to work. It's massively inefficient: Every time someone in the UK wants to view a webpage on a US server it gets send, possibly billions of times, through the oceanic fiber. If there is to be hope of getting any more than text through bidirectionally (And it must be bidirectional: Having one operator decide who gets precious capacity isn't in the hacker spirit) then it's going to mean some serious rethinking of networking fundamentals.
There is an advantage to be had with modern technology though. Storage is cheap. Cheap as dirt. Want to put a few gig in every ground station? Easy. Want to put a few terabytes in the larger ones? Compared to the cost of the radio gear you need anyway, barely adds anything. So I think what should be looked into is trying to shift the internet further towards content-addressible networking and caching (Proper content-addressible hash-based caching, not the evil that is trying to cache HTTP where every access needs to ask the server if the content has changed). Such technologies would reduce the need for expensive bandwidth by orders of magnitude, at the expense of consuming far cheaper storage at every caching node. Magnet links are a good place to start.
This sort of stuff is great as science fiction, but just pathetic when it's taken seriously.
Getting people onto the moon is serious engineering work, extremely time consuming and, above all, incredibly fucking expensive.
Nothing like hacking at all, IMHO.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"At the Chaos Communication Camp 2011 Jens Ohlig, Lars Weiler, and Nick Farr proposed a daunting task: to land a hacker on the Moon by 2034.
I'll be more impressed if they can get someone back from the moon.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Yawn, phase one has been done (http://www.amsat.org/) and also takes care of the nasty problem of radio spectrum management for up and down links with the bird. LEO satellites are fine for store and forward emergency communications, but anything less than geosynchronous is going to make for some grumpy consumers. After all, first the non-synchronous satellite finally comes above the horizon far anough to be useful, then the guy serving the bountiful buffet of pr0n torrents has to shut down his server because Mom says it's time for bed. After finally hitting enough servers through enough birds (and on and on) you get the file, only to find out it's a password locked fake, It would be maddening enough to make a guy go back to stroke books.
Can't we send them all to the moon?
I'd pony up to send all of Anon too.
The only caveat is that they can't come back.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
If we should get over sending humans into space and focus on telepresence, humans are so inadequately designed for space travel and low gravity living.
At least stay out of space until robots can build a viable environment that can be spun up for simulated gravity, properly shielded against micrometeorites and radiation with 90% self sustaining capabilities, those tin cans they have strung together in orbit and called a space station are pathetic.
We are capable of so much more.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Better spend a couple billion of taxpayer money on a crazy orbital defense system..
Looks like the crazy moon base idea will go through after all.
I believe that hackerdom should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the next three decades are out, of landing a hacker on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in 2034 and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because we p0wn...