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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.'"
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).
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'.
Taco got hitched, and she won't let him hang with the boys...
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?
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
It's not that cool.
It's not cool, it's freezing cold!
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
"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; }
... and no more drugs for you!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
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."
We'll strap your ass to the rocket's nose cone for a wonderful view.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Naw. It's like 2.7 Kelvin. I've seen colder.
Tell ye, should go there on periods of max solar activity: the solar wind contributes to the chill factor ;)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
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...
Actually, it's very, very hot. The kinetic energy of what few particles there are is very high. It just acts really cold because there are so few of them that heat transfer by conduction is reduced to a negligable rate.