Author Topic: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony  (Read 18979 times)

Offline aero

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Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« on: 06/03/2014 07:19 pm »
Once the first 100 (1,000, 10,000, more?) people settle on Mars, they will be nearly cut off from the Information Age. That will be a real downer. Of course they will have local, Mars, communication but no chatting with Earth. Text email only? Mars Google to Earth won't work very well and participating in NSF discussions will be very awkward.

What can be done to improve the situation?

Bring data on media to Mars for installation on the local Mars-net will work for archive data but how current can it be kept?

What will the Mars-net look like, how will it be kept current how will a Scientist do data searches? Will the colonists just forget about surfing the Earth Internet?

Other problems/solutions?
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Offline DMeader

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #1 on: 06/03/2014 07:50 pm »
Unless someone comes up with a Star-Trek-style subspace radio (which worked either in real-time or was delayed depending on the needs of the story), communications with the home world are always going to be governed by that pesky speed-of-light thing.

Perhaps high-bandwidth links can be created and streaming might be the best way to move large amounts of data to the new place, and save it to the archives as it arrives. Otherwise, you'd have to simply take a copy of as much of everything that you could with you when you go. I've heard there is a gadget that contains all of Wikipedia. Perhaps that would be a start.

Offline Mader Levap

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #2 on: 06/03/2014 07:52 pm »
I think Martian colony will have for long, long time more pressing concerns than lack of Internet.  ::)
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Offline Lar

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #3 on: 06/03/2014 09:59 pm »
I think Martian colony will have for long, long time more pressing concerns than lack of Internet.  ::)
Not sure I agree. Some sort of connectivity will be necessary if only to send up the 3D printing instructions for the gadget that our heroes depended on in the last cliffhanger... I think it may well be low bitrate but we will need something. So I would expect that (as previous threads discussed) some of the cargo sent in the first few missions will be comms related.  MRO can't last forever, although it's functioning well so far.
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Offline ChrisWilson68

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #4 on: 06/03/2014 10:20 pm »
It won't be hard to use laser links between satellites (of Mars, Earth, and the Sun) to get high data rates.  But the latency will be high.

We'll do what we do on Earth -- use caching.  We can have a data center on Mars or in the vicinity of Mars that caches the most popular web sites and caches a search index.  Probably Google will be willing to cache a portion of its search index there.  E-mail, of course, will work just fine.  With proper caching, news sites, Facebook, discussion fora, etc. could be made to work almost as well.  Real-time chats won't, of course, and neither will real-time games.

This will be very important psychologically for the Mars colonists.

Offline guckyfan

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #5 on: 06/04/2014 03:46 am »
It won't be hard to use laser links between satellites (of Mars, Earth, and the Sun) to get high data rates.  But the latency will be high.

We'll do what we do on Earth -- use caching.  We can have a data center on Mars or in the vicinity of Mars that caches the most popular web sites and caches a search index.  Probably Google will be willing to cache a portion of its search index there.  E-mail, of course, will work just fine.  With proper caching, news sites, Facebook, discussion fora, etc. could be made to work almost as well.  Real-time chats won't, of course, and neither will real-time games.

This will be very important psychologically for the Mars colonists.

Absolutely. I too believe, this is important, especially in the beginning to give the feeling of not being cut off.

Offline Eric Hedman

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #6 on: 06/04/2014 03:55 am »
I would suspect that the most popular sites based upon searches by residents of mars would be updated to a local mirrored server with updates using bandwidth unused by higher priority communications with the rest of the solar system.  You would probably have two types of searches.  One would find info on the cached sites on the servers.  After the results are pulled up, the user would probably be prompted if they want to extend the search to earth or other locations with a significant lag for the results.

Offline mrmandias

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #7 on: 06/04/2014 02:52 pm »
Lack of full-on instant web immersion is a feature, not a bug.

Offline Ludus

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #8 on: 06/04/2014 03:03 pm »
I think Martian colony will have for long, long time more pressing concerns than lack of Internet.  ::)

I strongly disagree. I think it will be a top priority to have high bandwidth internet in place from day one. This is one of the areas old scifi gets wrong (because they missed it on earth too). Mars settlers will be in constant close communication. Even on earth texting and email asynchronous communication dominates.

Mars settlers will use Facebook, credit cards, twitter, the financial system. Mars exports will be dominated by digital information. Server farms on Mars will cache internet locally as occurs regionally on earth. The light speed latency issue will prevent IM and synchronous voice or video but that won't be as isolating as it seemed in scifi in an era without any experience of a vast range of asynchronous modes that are pretty fast, cheap and convenient.

Offline sheltonjr

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #9 on: 06/04/2014 06:09 pm »
Solar conjunction between Earth and Mars with be a PITA.    ;)

Will need a relay satellite 90 degrees in front or behind Earth orbital path to maintain the connection.

Offline acsawdey

Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #10 on: 06/04/2014 06:21 pm »
Clearly, somebody will have to build a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Equilateral relay station ...

Offline sghill

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #11 on: 06/04/2014 06:42 pm »
Books are nice.  They are generally fault tolerant, have long storage lifetimes during power outages, and they can keep the colony warm during times of distress or religious fervor.
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Offline Lar

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #12 on: 06/04/2014 07:18 pm »
I would suspect that the most popular sites based upon searches by residents of mars would be updated to a local mirrored server with updates using bandwidth unused by higher priority communications with the rest of the solar system.  You would probably have two types of searches.  One would find info on the cached sites on the servers.  After the results are pulled up, the user would probably be prompted if they want to extend the search to earth or other locations with a significant lag for the results.

This.

I expect that the second search would be an extra cost option since it would use valuable interplanetary bandwidth.  One of the markers of transition from outpost to colony is "who pays for that search"... if it's the end user (or his employer) that's a sign of transition to colony-ness :) ..
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Offline MajorBringdown

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Offline QuantumG

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #14 on: 06/04/2014 10:18 pm »
"Why'd they up and go to Mars?"

"To get away from Facebook."
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline high road

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #15 on: 06/06/2014 06:53 am »
It won't be hard to use laser links between satellites (of Mars, Earth, and the Sun) to get high data rates.  But the latency will be high.

We'll do what we do on Earth -- use caching.  We can have a data center on Mars or in the vicinity of Mars that caches the most popular web sites and caches a search index.  Probably Google will be willing to cache a portion of its search index there.  E-mail, of course, will work just fine.  With proper caching, news sites, Facebook, discussion fora, etc. could be made to work almost as well.  Real-time chats won't, of course, and neither will real-time games.

This will be very important psychologically for the Mars colonists.

Absolutely. I too believe, this is important, especially in the beginning to give the feeling of not being cut off.

If you can't go without instant responses from friends and family back home, you're not the right stuff for a colonist. Only a few decades ago, there was no internet. That didn't stop people from emigrating to another continent. More accurately, it stopped millions from emigrating, but tens of thousands and eventually millions took the risk. In the early days, communications with people back on the old continent took months, and you were never sure the letters reached their destination. But a few hours lag in sending video and e-mail back and forth would be an insurmountable psychological barrier to colonists? Please... There are still locations on this planet that don't have access to internet. That doesn't stop people from living there.

Increasing bandwith is another matter. We are after all in the information age, and the Martian colony will have to send massive amounts of information back and forth in order to do whatever they're there to do.

Offline ChrisWilson68

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #16 on: 06/06/2014 07:13 am »
It won't be hard to use laser links between satellites (of Mars, Earth, and the Sun) to get high data rates.  But the latency will be high.

We'll do what we do on Earth -- use caching.  We can have a data center on Mars or in the vicinity of Mars that caches the most popular web sites and caches a search index.  Probably Google will be willing to cache a portion of its search index there.  E-mail, of course, will work just fine.  With proper caching, news sites, Facebook, discussion fora, etc. could be made to work almost as well.  Real-time chats won't, of course, and neither will real-time games.

This will be very important psychologically for the Mars colonists.

Absolutely. I too believe, this is important, especially in the beginning to give the feeling of not being cut off.

If you can't go without instant responses from friends and family back home, you're not the right stuff for a colonist.

Nobody is claiming that the colonists couldn't live without it, just that they would have a far better quality of life with it.

Only a few decades ago, there was no internet. That didn't stop people from emigrating to another continent.

In the times people were going to remote colonies in the past, people were also routinely dying young, enslaving each other, and doing many other things we've progressed beyond.  21st century colonists shouldn't have to live like 16th century colonists.

Also, on Earth virtually every emigrant was emigrating to a sizeable community.  An earlier Mars colony might be much smaller.

The colonists on Earth would still be able to go outside and play and run and feel grass in their feet.  Colonists on Mars will be going to a much more difficult-to-live-in situation.  Never being able to go outdoors without a huge protective suit will have a big negative psychological effect.  Not being able to ever see wild animals or plants, or feel wind or rain or snow will have big negative psychological effects.  An internet connection can help counter some of those negatives.

More accurately, it stopped millions from emigrating, but tens of thousands and eventually millions took the risk. In the early days, communications with people back on the old continent took months, and you were never sure the letters reached their destination. But a few hours lag in sending video and e-mail back and forth would be an insurmountable psychological barrier to colonists? Please... There are still locations on this planet that don't have access to internet. That doesn't stop people from living there.

Again, the remove locations on Earth that don't have internet access have animals and plants and fresh air and communities to keep people psychologically fit.

Offline fatjohn1408

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #17 on: 06/06/2014 07:23 am »
Books are nice.  They are generally fault tolerant, have long storage lifetimes during power outages, and they can keep the colony warm during times of distress or religious fervor.

But a library weighs a lot more than a kindle.

Offline CuddlyRocket

Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #18 on: 06/07/2014 09:34 am »
Establishing an Internet link between Mars and Earth is straightforward. The only question is how much resources are you willing to apply to obtain a specified bandwidth.

Mars Express has a 1.6m high-gain antenna capable of transmitting 230 kilobits per second back to Earth, and the satellite has a maximum electrical power available of 650 watts. And the technology is 15 years old.

Amateur astronomers have robust systems capable of keeping much heavier telescopes pointed at a spot in the sky, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Given the signal time lag, colonists are not going to be surfing Earth websites like people on Earth do - it'll be more like click on a link and go off and have lunch. Or go to sleep.

Offline pippin

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #19 on: 06/07/2014 01:32 pm »
Bandwidth will not be the real problem. The real problem will be that most internet services these days require real-time comm.
Essentially, the way to go will be to replicate the application part of the services on Mars (application servers) and sync the backend data with the data on earth.
Since you will have to do that pretty much for each service you will be limited to the use of those services who offer a dedicated Mars service.

All real-time stuff as well as simple web pages will be out of the loop, you'll probably invent some kind of batch request/cache service for static pages but there aren't a lot of these left.

And you can bet that the likes of Facebook and Google will be among the fist ones offering a solution so no escaping them :)

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #20 on: 06/13/2014 12:41 pm »
Cute little problem. Conceptually most content on the web could be cached on the Mars side, eg youtube, wikipedia, new sites and so on, but modern content is not written that way and you can't ask every single website designer to cater to such a small population.

I wonder if the solution is closely related to web archiving:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_archiving

After all, you could view the Mars colonists as "future researchers". They happen to only be 40 minutes in the future.


Offline gosnold

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #21 on: 06/13/2014 06:18 pm »
Are there publicly available estimates of the volume of data stored by Facebook/Google cache/etc? And of the power needed per user to support these services?

Offline braddock

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #22 on: 06/13/2014 07:46 pm »
A single hard drive today can hold about one half of the text in the Library of Congress. 

For a sense of scale, a couple years ago I started the Internet-in-a-Box project to deploy content to schools in undeveloped countries without inexpensive internet access.

On a single 1 terabyte hard drive we ship:

-All of Wikipedia in 37 languages
-Full maps of the world down to street level worldwide
-500 hours of instructional video
-35,000 e-books
-most of the worlds open source software, including source code.

That fits in about 650 GB.  Fits in your shirt pocket.

http://internet-in-a-box.org

By the time we get to Mars the amount we can bring as a cache would be mind boggling.

Offline cryptoanarchy

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #23 on: 06/14/2014 03:35 am »
Without much work a server could contain 10TB of static internet data.  This could include all of the video commonly watched on sites like youtube and most of the popular websites data to that point and lifetimes of educational material including video.    A person surfing the web could surf for years with just that content.  What would not work well are sites like Facebook which are bandwidth heavy and require more realtime data.  The internet on mars would be great for serious stuff and education but bad for most recreational surfing. 

Communication to and from earth would be slower, but still very useful for email and text conversations.  Just no real time video of course. 

Does not seem like a problem to me.  :)




Offline sheltonjr

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #24 on: 06/14/2014 01:02 pm »
Once you get rid of the porn and shopping,  their isn't that much on the internet anyway. 

I wonder if Amazon prime members get free shipping to Mars?

Electronic products would work.

Offline kerlc

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #25 on: 06/14/2014 01:49 pm »
what about local equivalents to Facebook?

If martian population grows high enough, it's bound to happen. It might even be prefered to earthly facebook, what with the ability of instant messages and whatnot.
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Offline Burninate

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #26 on: 06/14/2014 02:02 pm »
Without much work a server could contain 10TB of static internet data.  This could include all of the video commonly watched on sites like youtube and most of the popular websites data to that point and lifetimes of educational material including video.
OT, but - 10TB?  Try 10PB.  Those of us who have HTPCs know how little 10TB buys you.  "All of the commonly watched video on sites like Youtube" is a very large set indeed - in 2012 uploads amounted to an estimated 76PB/yr.  For PDF books, 10TB is a reasonably good number, catching a sizable subset of the existing jailbroken textbook corpus.  For Internet text?  Wholly insufficient.  The Internet Archive passed 10PB scale two years ago.
For a sense of scale, a couple years ago I started the Internet-in-a-Box project to deploy content to schools in undeveloped countries without inexpensive internet access.
Such projects will always be an impoverished subset of the human enterprise, because they must accommodate our archaic legal system, under which everything is copyrighted-by-default, and a conservative legal stance is to never sing 'happy birthday'.  Library Genesis, the most recent e-book monument built by those who do not respect copyright, has ~30TB of books and papers, and no audio or video.

We can pack 4TB into a 2.5" SSD now, and 256GB into a microSD form factor.  By the time interplanetary internet caching becomes a problem worth spending a million dollars on, we'll be able to send 100 petabytes in one ISS payload rack, depending on how long Moore's Law holds.  The limitation, rather, is whether we'll be able to subvert our legal system sufficiently to allow the content to be shipped up there - or to be shipped to the developing world, for that matter.
« Last Edit: 06/14/2014 02:18 pm by Burninate »

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #27 on: 06/14/2014 05:37 pm »
Cute little problem. Conceptually most content on the web could be cached on the Mars side, eg youtube, wikipedia, new sites and so on, but modern content is not written that way and you can't ask every single website designer to cater to such a small population.

I wonder if the solution is closely related to web archiving:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_archiving

After all, you could view the Mars colonists as "future researchers". They happen to only be 40 minutes in the future.
A heck of a lot of web content is already geographically cached for lower latency access over cheaper links. This is why Google has lots of data centers all over the world. For the vast majority of content like youtube and wikipedia (i.e. stuff that can tolerate a 30 minute delay), this would work just fine (with modifications). Look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network

When you access Google or youtube or netflix other major websites, you're very often accessing a geographically close data center, not the same data center that web surfers in Timbuktu are accessing. So with a large enough population (i.e. so a content delivery network would invest in locating some servers at Mars), accessing the Internet wouldn't be that different than it is right now. The only difference is that things like Twitter and this web forum would be a few dozen minutes out of sync. Also, ISPs already do a lot of local caching already. Disk is really cheap, about 2-3 cents per gigabyte (which is cheaper than typical bandwidth, at least for the end user) and costs about $500-1000/kg, so probably cheaper than the cost of transport to Mars by the time this is relevant... by which time they'll likely use just all SSD and even cheaper and more data-dense.
« Last Edit: 06/14/2014 05:47 pm by Robotbeat »
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Offline IslandPlaya

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #28 on: 06/14/2014 05:52 pm »
Will need to be error-corrected/resistant to radiation on the the trip/stay there.
Will double at least the storage costs...

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #29 on: 06/14/2014 05:58 pm »
Will need to be error-corrected/resistant to radiation on the the trip/stay there.
Will double at least the storage costs...
Nah, just wipe 'er clean and send the data via laser (cheapest way) when you get there. The cache will be updated with new content as needed.
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Offline IslandPlaya

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #30 on: 06/15/2014 12:55 am »
No. It will be cheaper to send the NAND dies. Multiple ones for redundancy than set up the 2-way laser coms.
Not that the coms shouldn't be set up anyways like....

Offline ThereIWas3

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #31 on: 06/15/2014 07:57 pm »
The larger your cache of information, the more clever you have to be in finding what you want.  Google throws a lot of compute power at this problem, and has several dozen data centers around the world.  They were working on modular ones that fit in a 40 ft storage container.  With a lot of unstructured information, you need to have built lots of secondary and teriary indexes, and these can be larger than the basic data itself.  Without those indexes your search times go up greatly.

Still, until a Martian civilization grows beyond a couple thousand people, the number of searches per second is not likely to be high, and these days you can cram a lot of computes with their storage into a box of 0.1 cubic meters, as long as it is shielded from that cosmic radiation, and you can cool it.  Low voltage, super tiny, integrated circuits (like we all have in our cellphones) are easily disrupted by radiation.  So either you shield them really well (weght, bulk, etc), or settle for 10-year or 20-year old technology which is much more robust at the nano-scales of semiconductor physics (weght, bulk, and more power and cooling).

Offline cryptoanarchy

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #32 on: 06/16/2014 03:07 am »
Without much work a server could contain 10TB of static internet data.  This could include all of the video commonly watched on sites like youtube and most of the popular websites data to that point and lifetimes of educational material including video.
OT, but - 10TB?  Try 10PB.  Those of us who have HTPCs know how little 10TB buys you.  "All of the commonly watched video on sites like Youtube" is a very large set indeed - in 2012 uploads amounted to an estimated 76PB/yr.  For PDF books, 10TB is a reasonably good number, catching a sizable subset of the existing jailbroken textbook corpus.  For Internet text?  Wholly insufficient.  The Internet Archive passed 10PB scale two years ago.

Space rated hardware is going to store a heck of a lot less then standard products but I was going for a low number because well curated 10TB is a huge amount of data.  That being said 1PB would be doable but not something that would fit in a 100lb space rated box.  . 

Most of the stuff on youtube by size is basically unwatched.  99% of watched videos make up 30 percent of the storage.  Of the remaining many are repeats (though the multiple copies are watched independently).  If you took out all of the videos with less then 10k views youtube would be much smaller. 

When I said text I meant text transmissions not archiving the entire internet. 

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #33 on: 06/16/2014 03:37 am »
Doesn't have to be space-rated. People launch arduinos and cellphones into space and /operate/ them (need a good watchdog circuit). Just bury it under a few feet of soil when you get there, and you'll be good. 10PB wouldn't be too hard. As far as mass, you can get 1TB SSDs that have a mass of about 8.5grams apiece, so 10PB worth of SSDs (raw) would have about as much mass as one typical American.
« Last Edit: 06/16/2014 03:38 am by Robotbeat »
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Offline KelvinZero

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #34 on: 06/16/2014 09:57 am »
I wonder if the solution is closely related to web archiving:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_archiving
A heck of a lot of web content is already geographically cached for lower latency access over cheaper links.
I was just thinking of those webpages that don't finish loading until something has replied with a few bytes of information from your browser etc. I expect caching would mainly reduce bandwidth but not interfere with attempts to communicate to the server.. Otherwise you are stuck with viewing mars-friendly sites.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #35 on: 06/16/2014 01:29 pm »
To the OP:  Verizon or Comcast.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline guckyfan

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #36 on: 06/16/2014 03:30 pm »
I was just thinking of those webpages that don't finish loading until something has replied with a few bytes of information from your browser etc. I expect caching would mainly reduce bandwidth but not interfere with attempts to communicate to the server.. Otherwise you are stuck with viewing mars-friendly sites.

I think a proxy server on earth could help with this problem.

Offline Mikesicles

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #37 on: 07/15/2014 01:51 pm »
It is possible to just allow the colonists to download sites and information to the local information hub based on desire instead of trying to store the entire non porn content of the internet on mars

Offline Robert Thompson

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #38 on: 07/15/2014 02:52 pm »
Reverse of OP
I wonder if one of the first products and services that Mars could offer would be applications, software, scientific programming. Ship code back to large client datasets on earth. No, you would not go to Mars *to be a computational researcher. But you could go to Mars *and retain, on top of the other technical and engineering prowess required of an astronaut, an Earth-marketable skill with which you could work from home.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-25/computer-controlled-trucks-taking-over-in-pilbara-mining-wa/5412642
(Check ~7:20 about automation being developed in remote Australian mining country)
« Last Edit: 07/15/2014 02:57 pm by Hernalt »

Offline ThereIWas3

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #39 on: 07/15/2014 07:40 pm »
Doesn't have to be space-rated. People launch arduinos and cellphones into space and /operate/ them (need a good watchdog circuit). Just bury it under a few feet of soil when you get there, and you'll be good.

Those Arduinos do not last very long, and that is in LEO.   Consumer grade computers  would have to be shielded all the way to Mars, as the damage to the crystalline structures can happen even when powered off.

Offline meekGee

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #40 on: 07/16/2014 06:58 am »
Once the first 100 (1,000, 10,000, more?) people settle on Mars, they will be nearly cut off from the Information Age. That will be a real downer. Of course they will have local, Mars, communication but no chatting with Earth. Text email only? Mars Google to Earth won't work very well and participating in NSF discussions will be very awkward.

What can be done to improve the situation?

Bring data on media to Mars for installation on the local Mars-net will work for archive data but how current can it be kept?

What will the Mars-net look like, how will it be kept current how will a Scientist do data searches? Will the colonists just forget about surfing the Earth Internet?

Other problems/solutions?

We are very spoiled in how we expect to get sub-second communication with every point on the globe.

Once there's civilization on Mars, it will simply not be in real-time contact with Earth - just as simple as that.

The speed of light is a harsh mistress.


Offline data (e.g. cached web) will be available, but otherwise, no chat, no Skype, no real time gaming.

As you say, Email.

And think twice before you hit "send".
ABCD - Always Be Counting Down

Offline GregA

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #41 on: 07/24/2014 10:30 pm »
While I think a large proportion of the Internet information can be replicated, there are many things which have live interaction. You can't "surf" if the next step in your browsing has a 20 minute wait - and similarly a quick search where you check multiple possibilities can't work if each possibility takes 20 minutes to check.

One method of accessing those types of websites will be working with someone on Earth. You tell them what you are looking for and they try to not just provide better results than a search engine does, but to follow the links and anticipate which ones you will find useful, and where you will go deeper into a site (or follow links), so that they can build a small cache of valuable information in a much shorter time for you. Plus you can see links that were only briefly followed and redirect them to find more on those if you like (with a 20 minute delay).

Similarly a YouTube partial sync with Earth might only have the most popular videos, and when it shows "related videos" it would only show those that are available on Mars. But when someone on Earth emails a friend on Mars saying "you gotta see this!", the Earth based email relay might extract YouTube (and ANY website) addresses sent in emails and send them to the Mars Cache so they're ready to look at when the person receives their email.

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #42 on: 07/25/2014 01:02 am »
You don't search the whole web when you do a google search, you're sending a request to the nearest Google data center which sends back the result. For a million person colony, Google would just have a few servers at Mars.
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Offline ThereIWas3

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #43 on: 07/25/2014 01:48 am »
I think the larger data flow will be Mars to Earth.   The people on Mars are going to be very busy and excited about discoveries and building to spend much time web surfing.   They will need access to reference material, like medical, chemical, etc.   And music and literature for entertainment - more static stuff they could have taken along in bulk.

People who feel a need to keep up with their Facebook friends would not have signed up for the trip in the first place.

Offline pogo661

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #44 on: 07/25/2014 02:27 am »

One method of accessing those types of websites will be working with someone on Earth. You tell them what you are looking for and they try to not just provide better results than a search engine does, but to follow the links and anticipate which ones you will find useful, and where you will go deeper into a site (or follow links), so that they can build a small cache of valuable information in a much shorter time for you.


Google recently hired Ray Kurzweil and tasked him with developing an AI search engine that does what you'd described.  Interestingly,  Ray is also famous for looking at technology progression trends and predicting when technologies will be mature enough to make a given target goal available for a target price.  If anyone could predict when different fields of research could be conducted independently on Mars with limited communication from earth including the shipping of all necessary lab equipment or fabrication in place, it would by Ray.

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #45 on: 07/25/2014 03:39 am »
One method of accessing those types of websites will be working with someone on Earth. You tell them what you are looking for and they try to not just provide better results than a search engine does, but to follow the links and anticipate which ones you will find useful, and where you will go deeper into a site (or follow links), so that they can build a small cache of valuable information in a much shorter time for you.
Thats why I mentioned web archiving above. Think of Martians as web historians looking 40 minutes into the past.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_archiving
On top of the biggies like google etc, I think this would let you get a look at 99% of what is available and perhaps more importantly you could feel you were not just looking at what a discrete group of organizations were packaging for you.

If the existing data sets were not suitable perhaps there could be a bit of software you could get a hundred thousand volunteers  to run, like the SETI screensaver app.

Offline GregA

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #46 on: 07/25/2014 04:49 am »
You don't search the whole web when you do a google search, you're sending a request to the nearest Google data center which sends back the result. For a million person colony, Google would just have a few servers at Mars.
Yes but that has limits. Search Google, get a list of results, now click through to read those results - wait for the website to be sent or use the Google Cache. Open those websites and realise some are crap. Some are good. Some have interesting links to better information - click through and wait for the link to be sent.

What you want is a broader search that better identifies what you're after and feeds that information to you to avoid long waits. But you don't want it to try to send you all possible avenues you'll look at, because some are a waste of valuable bandwidth.

Pogo's comment about Google makes sense. On a simpler level perhaps Google can offer its cached content in a more browse-able form so you can stay in the cache and have a good experience.

Offline alexterrell

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #47 on: 08/05/2014 02:58 pm »
I think you have a custom made "Mars web". This is limited to perhaps 100 - 1000 TB (maybe by 2050 that will seem ridiculously small - if it were today, I'd expect 100TB). There is a copy of this on Earth and a copy on Mars, and a laser comms system keep these synchronised. You'd want something like 1GB/s. What can a laser achieve over those distances? I assume you have orbital lasers with about 10KW of transmission power and decent telescopes to read them at each end.

The Mars Web (mww) contains:
1. Data put there by Mars crew, which can be accessed by Earth researchers. This would also include the base blueprints etc - and given appropriate levels of security. This section can be accessed from the www, again given read/write permissions.
2. A selection of the www - useful sites like nasaspaceflight.com and Wikipedia.
3. An index of the www.

If you run a search on the MWW, you get a list of results available on the MWW, available for immediate download. You also get a list of results from the index. Click on one of those, and you get your page in a new tab in 30 minutes or so. You might have options like: Download low resolution summary - an Earth based agent will obtain the page, summarise it and put it on the MWW to be synchronised.




Offline aero

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #48 on: 08/05/2014 05:01 pm »
A big demand on bandwidth Mars to Earth will be in support of the virtual reality video game, "Exploring Mars."

Not a TV program watching the colonists, rather players virtually becoming a colonist/explorer and vicariously experiencing the exploration of a new planet. And a little of the hardships.

The game will be owned by the Mars colony so everyone on Mars will wear a camera feeding the net and building the database to support the game, especially those who go on a walk-about. Subscriptions to the game will go toward funding the colony.
Retired, working interesting problems

Offline Robert Thompson

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #49 on: 08/06/2014 12:07 am »
Smart caching would use recommender algorithms.

Offline bilbo

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #50 on: 08/19/2014 09:30 pm »
Oh well, sucks we wont get internet porn on mars. :)
I guess our martian astronauts will just have to bring playboys like the Apollo astronauts did!

Offline high road

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #51 on: 08/20/2014 09:59 am »
Oh well, sucks we wont get internet porn on mars. :)
I guess our martian astronauts will just have to bring playboys like the Apollo astronauts did!

For a two year trip? They'll be improvising some alternatives on Mars in no time. What do they have to work with? If Home Office is breathing down their necks, they'll have to go all the way back to cave art and fertility statuettes :p

Offline Robert Thompson

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #52 on: 08/20/2014 11:41 am »
ASCII

Offline guckyfan

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #53 on: 08/20/2014 12:57 pm »
Oh well, sucks we wont get internet porn on mars. :)
I guess our martian astronauts will just have to bring playboys like the Apollo astronauts did!

For a two year trip? They'll be improvising some alternatives on Mars in no time. What do they have to work with? If Home Office is breathing down their necks, they'll have to go all the way back to cave art and fertility statuettes :p

How about women? It is going to be a Colony after all.

Offline high road

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Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #54 on: 08/21/2014 06:54 am »
Oh well, sucks we wont get internet porn on mars. :)
I guess our martian astronauts will just have to bring playboys like the Apollo astronauts did!

For a two year trip? They'll be improvising some alternatives on Mars in no time. What do they have to work with? If Home Office is breathing down their necks, they'll have to go all the way back to cave art and fertility statuettes :p

How about women? It is going to be a Colony after all.

Despite the name, about half of the cavemen were actually women. There's plenty of erotic caveart and fertility statuettes from that time. ;-) Or how about ancient Rome? If ever there was a time with nearly unlimited easy, affordable and socially accepted access to sex, that was the time. Yet it's also the culture with the most plentiful erotic art.

Actually, the more men and women you put together, the closer you put them together, and the more they depend on cooperation, the more 'pornography' you get. People in psychology and sociology have some convincing theories about it being an excellent mechanism to relieve stress and to facilitate the social structure of the group.
« Last Edit: 08/21/2014 07:00 am by high road »

Offline Jet Black

Re: Internet Access for the New Mars Colony
« Reply #55 on: 09/03/2014 03:28 pm »
the internet on mars will be like the 1990s all over again.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. -- Richard Feynman

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