NASA, start your torrents: 622 Mbps broadband link FOUND ON MOON NASA has successfully tested a broadband communications system built into its Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) probe, firing data to and from the Moon at rates of up to 622Mbps. LADEE, launched last month (to the detriment of an unfortunate amphibian), houses a number of instruments designed to measure …
Depending on the alignment of the planets, the ping time to Mars and back ranges between roughly 10 and 40 minutes at the speed of light, averaging around 30, so that wouldn't make for a particularly comfortable web browsing experience. Sure, you might be able to download a Blu-ray in 5 minutes, but you'll be waiting far longer than that for the video to start. "On-demand" will typically mean waiting half an hour from when you click play to when the stream starts on your end. Plus, you'll undoubtedly be sharing the connection with a bunch of filthy Mars-men, so expect your share of the bandwidth to be a fraction of that. Of course, there would likely be a colony-side datacenter that would continually download and cache videos, web sites and so on, but if you want anything that's not cached, expect to wait quite a while for it. And that's assuming whoever's in charge even lets you have a say in what gets downloaded.
I first ran across this idea at the Zurich Stock Exchange in about 1996, maybe early 1997. They had 155Mbps ATM fibre running under the street between the main Exchange and the back rooms. As a backup(*) they had a laser/receiver pair on the roof of each building.
(*) Yes, they had a backup that was less reliable than the main connection. Free-air laser links are prone to not working well when it is foggy (so the fog scatters the laser). Pigeons that happen to fly through the laser path will cause the loss of signal for a small fraction of a second, but apparently fog is the real villain here.
Nice headline. Did you also ask this question: Is 100 mpbs Good For A Broadband Speed?
Clearly the major carriers like AT&T, Verizon, TWC and Comcast should be out in force protesting this outrageous example of unfair government competition with private business! NASA should wait for one of these fine enterprises to establish relay stations in Lunar orbit rather than jumping in itself and interfering with our market based telecommunications economy! After all, private concerns have already proved they can put this sort of infrastructure anywhere in the universe: Didn't SpaceX deliver many needed tins of spam to the ISS? Haven't we all heard about the excellent broadband service received by the citizens of Wilson, NC? Hasn't anyone ever heard of "Lego Man in Space"? OK, so that stellar communications service enjoyed by people in Wilson is actually owned and operated by the city, and Lego Man in Space was a project by two Canadian high school students. I'm just saying.
The ability to send data is huge--but our ability to receive it is pretty limited--with radio the rate is slower--but we have huge dishes to receive it when it gets here (and radio and laser travel at the same speed)--there would be no practical way to justify the weight involved in sending a laser powerful enough to overcome the small size of our receivers--but for close by I'm sure it will be useful--but it will never go to Pluto.
Stan
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