NASA Says Lasers May Bring Broadband to Space

Megalith

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
From motion sickness and bone deterioration to disrupted senses and mutated DNA, there are tons of reasons why being in space sucks. Worst of all, of course, is super-slow internet access, which could make something as trivial as tweeting a complicated endeavor. NASA’s solution for a faster system will reportedly rely on lasers, which travel in a higher-frequency bandwidth than radio, allowing for better data transfer.

You’re lucky if a spacecraft can send more than a few megabits per second (Mbps). But we might be on the cusp of a change. Just as going from dial-up to broadband revolutionized the Internet and made high-resolution photos and streaming video a given, NASA may be ready to undergo a similar “broadband” moment in coming years. The key to that data revolution will be lasers. For almost 60 years, the standard way to “talk” to spacecraft has been with radio waves, which are ideal for long distances. But optical communications, in which data is beamed over laser light, can increase that rate by as much as 10 to 100 times.
 
6057912740.png


TFW work has a slightly better internet connection than people in space.
 
The Universe is only six thousand light years in size, or some kind of hokum, just ask a bible-thumper.

Or would that be just in radius? I don't know, pretty tired.
 
Space can make for some pretty long distances. The firing solution you would need for a laser being poked and pulled around by gravity and little bits of not-space and then hitting a receiver would be quite something.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Space can make for some pretty long distances. The firing solution you would need for a laser being poked and pulled around by gravity and little bits of not-space and then hitting a receiver would be quite something.
Click to expand...

This is what I was thinking. I'm sure they're aware of the weather and pollution would cause havok on communication that would need to be on point.

I'd rather have them invest the time and money into a Space Elevator.
 
Lasers may allow good bandwidth, but the ping times will still suck. For really good gaming, you need a tachyon link.
 
RogueTadhg said:
I don't have the leg muscles to climb the stairway to heaven.
Click to expand...

My first apartment was 6th floor, elevator barely worked so usually took stairs. In fact each time I went grocery shopping I swear it was out of order. Now I live in a ranch, f*** stairs lol.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Space can make for some pretty long distances. The firing solution you would need for a laser being poked and pulled around by gravity and little bits of not-space and then hitting a receiver would be quite something.
Click to expand...

I don't think you need to actually "hit a target", Fiber has Initiators, (broadcast), and Targets, (receive), so all the "Target" has to do is be able to "see" the initiator flashing and know within a certain degree of accuracy that the flashing light it's seeing is the initiator.

You've seen video of lasers getting close, and actually hitting a lens, there is a big difference but even when it's just close you can set it for what it is.

Of course rain, snow, and just cloud cover is really going to screw with things on bad weather days.
 
Darunion said:
My first apartment was 6th floor, elevator barely worked so usually took stairs. In fact each time I went grocery shopping I swear it was out of order. Now I live in a ranch, f*** stairs lol.
Click to expand...

Stairlift-130bottom.jpg


I could see E. Musk creating this and making billions on the stairway to space.
 
This does nothing for latency. The round trip times will still be a major issue. All this does is basically give them jumbo frames ;).
 
lcpiper said:
I don't think you need to actually "hit a target", Fiber has Initiators, (broadcast), and Targets, (receive), so all the "Target" has to do is be able to "see" the initiator flashing and know within a certain degree of accuracy that the flashing light it's seeing is the initiator.

You've seen video of lasers getting close, and actually hitting a lens, there is a big difference but even when it's just close you can set it for what it is.

Of course rain, snow, and just cloud cover is really going to screw with things on bad weather days.
Click to expand...

Your beginning and end point would both have to be in vacuum. The laser would have to hit the target to relay information otherwise you could just use a flood light. Really short distances like stations or even the moon aren't the problem though, it's other planets and outer planets. Jupiter is going to be 30-40 minutes of lag each way and that's if your beam is perfect and doesn't need redundant signal to compensate for loss. There will be lots and lots of loss in that distance. One thing we know about the emptiness of space is that it isn't empty and we also know that nothing is incredibly unstable, nothing is always becoming something and then becoming nothing again. Plus nothing physical is never nothing at all, space is chock-a-block full of stuff, stuff happening, and stuff radiating from stuff. All of that stuff is going to bend your beam, or block it, or refract it.
 
yes because we need the innertubes in the crowded confines of space :rolleyes: Meanwhile back on earth FCC honchos continue to broaden their collective IQ by making life better for everyone in the USA.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Your beginning and end point would both have to be in vacuum. The laser would have to hit the target to relay information otherwise you could just use a flood light. Really short distances like stations or even the moon aren't the problem though, it's other planets and outer planets. Jupiter is going to be 30-40 minutes of lag each way and that's if your beam is perfect and doesn't need redundant signal to compensate for loss. There will be lots and lots of loss in that distance. One thing we know about the emptiness of space is that it isn't empty and we also know that nothing is incredibly unstable, nothing is always becoming something and then becoming nothing again. Plus nothing physical is never nothing at all, space is chock-a-block full of stuff, stuff happening, and stuff radiating from stuff. All of that stuff is going to bend your beam, or block it, or refract it.
Click to expand...


Everything is relative.

We use ELF radios to talk with our nuclear sub fleet. Do you know how long it takes to send an ELF message?

Why would you need a vacuum and if you did, then why would anyone even consider this idea as no vacuum exists within our atmosphere.

You say you could just use a flood light but if you did, could you get the same performance from it and differentiate it from all the other ambient light in the background. It's not just about light being faster, it's also about how clearly you can control and attenuate amplified vs non-amplified light.

As for your loss, it's the same on any network, packets get dropped, that's why the protocols are designed to allow for it and resend traffic. Of course you can have too much loss and weather conditions would be the big issue here. But they use radio now, laser does offer potentially superior performance. Sometimes, when you have no better choice, you use the best you have, until your stuck falling back on the older slower next best tech until the better system is up again.
 
The latency depends on the distance. There's no work around to this. Not radio. Not laser. Corrupt data will take minutes or hours to correct. Laser is the best tech we can possibly have until we find a way to teleport data.
 
boomboy2k1 said:
The latency depends on the distance. There's no work around to this. Not radio. Not laser. Corrupt data will take minutes or hours to correct. Laser is the best tech we can possibly have until we find a way to teleport data.
Click to expand...

OK, so I have a situation where latency is severe, how can I compensate for it?

What if I use redundant links, instead of sending the packets sequentially over one link, I send the same packet data sequentially over 5 links simultaneously, from multiple and separate locations. I put up a spherical pattern of "laser router satellites". Depending on the direction to the target receiver, 5 satellites are selected and the data sent to each, and then relayed through the void for the "long haul" to the target receiver. This doesn't speed up the transmission, but at the target end, dealing with bad packets becomes an issue of comparing what was received from the 5 transmitters, and a resend is only needed when too many are different and you can't determine which packets were correct. That should greatly improve the latency impact for resending bad packets.

Now let's speed up the data transmission. I can't speed up the speed of light, so I'll bust the data into groups and transmit it from different initiators simultaneously. So I can speed up that how fast it takes to send a gigabyte of data by breaking it up into 5 different segments and transmitting it from 5 different sets, of 5 initiators, the "laser router satellites". Routalites

The time required on both ends do do all of this is minor compared to the time for the packets to transit the distances to planets. And truthfully, I think it's the redundant signals using comparison error correction techniques that are the real time saver, breaking the data up into multiple segments would still probably help out because the big time waster, resending lost packets, could be performed concurrently.
 
space travel is fake, please nasa, tell us when you will start and finish building a spaceport on the moon? so we can all go there
 
space travel is fake, please nasa, tell us when you will start and finish building a spaceport on the moon? so we can all go there
Click to expand...

!!!!!! DO NOT REPLY TO THIS GUY !!!!!!

!!! FOR THE LOVE OF THE FORUM !!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top