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With launch costs coming down it'll soon be more practical to launch a satellite into orbit that can store this information for a long time.
by Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
With launch costs coming down it'll soon be more practical to launch a satellite into orbit that can store this information for a long time.
- jacobush 9y agoNever to be found again
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoOrbits decay, often at a plannable rate. Eventually it crashes back to earth and becomes an archeological relic for future explorers. I bet you could even design the sattelite to burn specatularly (in many colors) on the way down so it's more likely to be seen and sought after.
- irrational 9y agoThough, it would most likely end up in the ocean since the majority of the earth's surface is covered by water.
- ImSkeptical 9y agoJust put enough satellites so it's statically very likely that one will land on land. (Although I don't see the point of this project)
- jsmthrowaway 9y agoOrbits only really decay due to atmospheric drag. Other tiny bits of cosmic, rarified gas can slow the spacecraft on a long timescale, and solar radiation pressure can perturb an orbit (occasionally dramatically, if the Sun is unhappy), but the effect is far smaller than constant drag. If a small satellite is orbiting Earth at a high enough altitude which was calculated to consider the broader gravitational system (Earth's natural satellites, the Sun, and fainter perturbations from nearby celestial objects have to be factored in), orbit can be designed to be stable on a long, long timescale. Millions of years, or more. The real fly in your plan's ointment would be exposure to space, which sucks a lot for electronics.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoI don't think that's a, uh, "fly in my plan's ointment". I don't think the satellite needs electronics at all.
- jsmthrowaway 9y agoThose are called ballistic projectiles, and you cannot place one in a precise orbit. You need upper-stage guidance, admittedly just for the placement of the satellite, but you still need electronics. Though, that being said, I'm now curious how you intend to store large-scale data without any use of electronics.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoLet me clarify - you don't need electronics that are effective forever. You would store the data in an analog format.
- jsmthrowaway 9y agoI'm struggling to think of a suitable "analog format," maybe help me out? Silicon tablets of runes? Analog is unscalable here, no matter how cheap launch systems are.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoProbably something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Project
- dredmorbius 9y agoStuff in the middle of a lot of not-stuff is fairly findable. Particularly if it has a strong signature on radar or microwave imaging.
- jacobush 9y agoI was thinking in the case the civilization lost access to a lot of basic data. Then finding the magic satellite without magic radar, maybe without even knowing about the magic satellite amongst all the other satellites up there.
- dredmorbius 9y agoA billion years is a long time. That said, a few redundant copies elsewhere wouldn't hurt.
- jacobush 9y agoOh, no I love the idea of a time capsule in space. In fact, given how cheap some mylar (for detection) and silicon (for inscribing information) is, I think "we" (humanity) should put a bunch of it up there. Like they Voyager probes, but MUCH more data, and maybe in orbit around the sun. But it's not something to rely upon as backups - but very nice as a message into curious explorers of the future.
- kbenson 9y agoA deep cave structure on the moon, and large triangles formed into the lunarscape visible from telescope on earth pointing towards the entrance. Bonus: You'll probably spur space development technology faster than normal for any civilization that can see it.
- dredmorbius 9y agoBury a bunch of magnets ....
- _jal 9y ago
- ivanhoe 9y agoSounds like it's a safer option, but requires that you have the technology and energy sources to communicate with that satellite - which is not really 100% reliable if you are about to experience a planet-wide catastrophe of such magnitude that it would require storing data outside of the Earth surface in a first place.
- moftz 9y agoYou could put in an orbit that would have a predefined reentry in the future. Design the satellite to survive reentry and somehow safely land in a way that relies on a mechanical system that wouldn't degrade like electronics in space would.
- sigstoat 9y ago> You could put in an orbit that would have a predefined reentry in the future. it isn't clear what you mean by this, but there's no picking where something will reenter hundreds of years in the future. if you just want to ensure that it will reenter, sooner or later, that's easily done. > Design the satellite to survive reentry and somehow safely land in a way that relies on a mechanical system that wouldn't degrade like electronics in space would. chunks of satellites are far more likely to survive reentry already than you might expect. i expect it would be feasible now to produce an insert sphere filled with information etched on nickel-superalloy plates that would survive uncontrolled reentry and impact with the earth's surface. i'd suggest storing the information in something covered with retro-reflectors, and dropping it onto the moon's surface, though. need more delta-V to get it there and retrieve it, but it'd be a simpler object to construct, and then later deconstruct.
- moftz 9y agoYou can calculate an estimate of reentry from atmospheric drag. It's not going to be exact but anything you throw up into LEO is going to come down someday and as long as the atmosphere doesn't change too much, it should be fairly close. http://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Category/Educational/Space%20Weather/Space%20Weather%20Effects/SatelliteOrbitalDecayCalculations.pdf http://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Category/Educational/Space%20Weath...