[extropy-chat] Re: Are dwarfs better for long duration spaceflight?

[David Lubkin]

Mike Lorrey wrote:

>The tough problem is that when you are mass producing something, you
>are doing so in order to earn a profit by doing so. Making space
>science pay for itself, such as geological assays and surveys do, is
>the key to doing what you want.

Part of that answer could be communications-relay spacecraft.

There's a group that's adapting the Internet protocols for the 
specific characteristics involved with an environment where even a 
ping will take hours and an aging host may have too little remaining 
power to waste resending mangled packets.

Perhaps they should look at (if they aren't already) adapting the 
routing protocols and building a space-worthy router that can become 
a standard module included in every spacecraft, manned or unmanned, 
regardless of mission.

I'd also love to see more standards for describing and merging sensor 
data, so that we can gradually build a grid of multi-purpose 
buoys-cum-lighthouses throughout the system and then extending 
beyond, perhaps one every light-hour for starters.

(The standards are, in part, to make it easy to combine data from 
different generations of buoys, so the grid can be upgraded piecewise 
or have better equipment in the areas we care more about.)


-- David.