What about another kind of private space missions?

Not long ago I posted somewhere at this board the private Mars mission planned and to be conducted by AMSAT in 2007 or 2009. The data of the mission can be received directly at amateur radio frequencies by the general public all over the world.

A few years ago I read an idea in the german version of Scientific American called "Spektrum der Wissenschaften".

The article proposed to send out probes that a replicate themselves and launch this replicates then while the launching generation remaining where they are and keeping their activity. The probes would be doing observations getting signals and informations from intelligent civilisations perhaps and sending signals and informations of our own civilisation.

What's intersting now is that the distribution of all the data, observations, signals and informations are proposed to be done by the well known infrastructure Internet - an Internet simply extended into space to distance growing without termination. Each place where a probe would be would have its own website at which the probes would display the informations and data about that place. To do so each of the probes would have and use TCP/IP, keep its computer connected to the Internet and at least some would include a server. This way the Internet would be spread all over the stars and planets.

Let's return now to the AMSAT mission. The probe is called P5A. The scientific hardware will be added by scientists etc.

Now - what about of adding an Internet-computer and a Mars-website to a following private Mars mission like this one? And what of an extension of that to other planets a private probe might be sent to? Personally this seems realistic to me and it could be a first step of a first step to a system-wide internet which in turn could be a first step of a first step to an interstellar Internet.

What do you think of such a private space mission of different kind? Would it be interesting for the PC- and Internet-community or its members?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

The probes could not host their own website - the round trip time for data would be way too long - we're talking minutes/hours/etc for transmissions to be received. If a probe was to have a website, it would be better to post the data back to a server on earth.

It would have to be some other protocol than TCP/IP too - something that is designed for the job of extremely high latency data connections.

Energy consumption would be another blocking issue - high powered radio communication would require a lot of power also.

It would be sufficient if the probes would host the original actual version of their own website and send all updates to the server on earth. To host their own website themselves would provide safety for the earthian servers in the case of the earthian copies to be lost. It would provide too the possibility to distribute the websites among all planets settled by men - moon and Mars or crews being on their way to Mars, the Galileian mons or Titan for example.

In the concept designed by the scientific article in "Spektrum der Wissenschaften" the focus was on distributing the websites all over the stars, interstellar disnace and the whole galaxy in the end - and especially all over the time. One of the major reasons is the possibility that civiliations perhaps don't exist long enough to get known to each other while existing both together. By the extended Internet in space each civilisation could get knowledge of all pre-existing civilisations that already passed away, disappeared, died etc.

The idea is designed for centuries and milleniums and for interstellar communication - why not starting it privately? Perhaps besides the PC- and Internet-community SETI would like the idea - SETI is privately organized since a few years (may be they are a potential of private space missions and space travel firms?).

It's an idea interesting in the long run partially and under the aspect of fascination partially.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

According to the article "NASA Tests Interplanetary Internet" ( www.space.com/news/081119-deep-space-internet.html ) there seems to be a germ step to extend the internet into space.

Of course it's interplanetary only at present and it will apply a different protocol than TCP/IP - but a more capable one adjusted to space. And no replication.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)