6 ms·

The special data device SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy sent to orbit is just the start

62 points by john58 9y ago

j0e1 9y ago
I was intrigued recently reading a relevant blog post by Stephen Wolfram that made me think a lot more about this topic. Here is the link for those interested: http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2018/01/showing-off-to-the-universe-beacons-for-the-afterlife-of-our-civilization/ http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2018/01/showing-off-to-the-un... And its discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16269500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16269500
hawktheslayer 9y ago
The most fascinating part of all this for me is the way Musk thinks "past the sale". He, and others, are thinking about things like how the interplanetary internet would work while we are all still bound to earth. I want to do more of this type of thinking that focuses not on if but when.
- debt 9y ago
  "I want to do more of this type of thinking that focuses not on if but when." It involves shipping a lot of bugs so brace yourself.
Theodores 9y ago
Here is how it works: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-u... So it is really a variation on the 'Bubblegram' 3D laser printing in glass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegram The '5D' comes from the size and the orientation of the bits that get fused together deep in the glass. The original 3D printing in glass came out of Russia, so it is interesting that this '5D' science is kind of Russian. I think that with 3D laser printing in glass there was always a problem of 'what use is this?' and I am wondering if that quest resulted in the Asimov ideas and the pitch to SpaceX etc. I do not think that it is at all obvious that 'size' and 'orientation' matter to our binary trained brains, so making a machine capable of reading the disc and then reading it and then getting the schema right is a bit of an ask. The HotWheels toy car with Spaceman is the merch they need to be selling to get donations for this.
grkvlt 9y ago
What on earth are '5D optical storage techniques' when they're at home?
- grkvlt 9y ago
  So, from the Southampton link below: > The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructures. I still think this is a bit disingenuous, it is a three-dimensional encoding. Would people consider a colour photograph as encoding four dimensional information when its pixels are represented as (x, y, brightness, colour) for example? How many dimensions does writing have?
  - jerf 9y ago
    "Would people consider a colour photograph as encoding four dimensional information when its pixels are represented as (x, y, brightness, colour) for example?" Actually, yes, they do. Computer vision people will envision a photograph as containing the number of dimensions equal to the number of independent numbers used to describe it, so a 1000x1000 RGB image would be considered 3,000,000-dimensional. This is perfectly routine in that world. Writing would be considered n-dimensional. http://www.mathwords.com/n/n_dimensions.htm http://www.mathwords.com/n/n_dimensions.htm In non-math terms you'd probably be justified in saying the question is ill-defined, as what constitutes an orthogonal vector component in a piece of writing is not something that has an universally-obvious answer. But it's not that there are 0 possibilities, it is that there is very many. In a nutshell, the word "dimension" does not simply describe 3-dimensional space, and all other uses are somehow wrong. Dimension applies to any independent element of a vector, and using it to describe spacetime is a tiny, tiny subset of the valid uses of the term. Another very common example is that describing the movement of a free floating in space rigid body is a twelve dimensional value; you need to describe x, y, and z (or equivalant), you need to describe the rotation around x, y, and z, and then you need to describe the velocity of each of those components. That's 12 dimensions. In fact, it's 12 dreadfully mundane dimensions. Incidentally, not included in valid uses of the term is the sci-fi sense of the term; "parallel dimension" is an oxymoron as it expands to "parallel perpendicular measurement", and "alternate dimension", especially with the idea that it is somehow "like" ours but just slightly different, is just a common scifi trope that is gibberish in real terms. I'd say that if one's concept of dimension isn't, as I said, "dreadfully mundane", it's not set up correctly. It's really a boring term; all the ways in which sci-fi makes it sound exciting or mysterious are not part of the real term. If you'd like to recover some of the sense of wonder associated with the term, I'd recommend learning about what it means to have a fractional dimension, in real mathematics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9n2gHsHN4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9n2gHsHN4
JackFr 9y ago
The first three Foundation books are good. Then Asimov went off the rails.
- Animats 9y ago
  All of the good Asimov books are in his first 100.
leonroy 9y ago
This is one piece of the puzzle certainly if man is going to look beyond Earth. If a Mars colony for instance was indeed established there would be some interesting data transfer and communication problems to work out in order to effectively transfer information and knowledge: Mars at its closest is 58 million km (36 million miles) away from Earth. It varies though and can be as far as 100 million km (63 million miles). That's about 192 seconds to 333 seconds of latency which an electromagnetic signal would have to traverse each way. I can't dig up what the maximum permissable latency of a TCP based network is but I'd imagine 5 minutes exceeds it. Even if you created a network in which a 5 minute latency is acceptable your throughput would be ridiculously low. There would likely have to be proxies and relays along the way to ensure acceptable performance but in itself the problem would require a lot of resources to effectively solve. I wonder if SpaceX is actively looking at offworld comms or if they hope organizations like Arch will attempt to solve it. Either way, an exciting time to be an engineer!
- namirez 9y ago
  Actually, Mars and Earth can be as far apart as 400 million km, which amounts to a latency of 1333 sec.
- Robotbeat 9y ago
  Already a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet
- Xeoncross 9y ago
  Wouldn't optical transmission (light) be much better? Both planets would have multiple satellites that would be the proxies between planets as one of them would always be able to "see" the others. Alignment would be tricky, but seems more promising with throughput.
  - rohit2412 9y ago
    They said " electromagnetic signal ". Isn't light an electromagnetic signal?
- 9y ago
Slansitartop 9y ago
It would be really cool if you could order disks like this, but with your own data. Especially if they directly encoded images that could be read with a microscope.
- outworlder 9y ago
  There are many use cases for reliable, long-term storage. This is why some places still use microfilms. This could be a product by itself, and finance the whole enterprise.
tardo99 9y ago
Getting sort of tired of the SpaceX Circle Jerk all over the Internet. Go ahead and downvote me.
deusofnull 9y ago
i wonder what the I/O speed of those crystal drives are...
hughes 9y ago
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a roadster full of data storage crystals hurtling down the highway.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  As long as you don't need reliable delivery!
comnetxr 9y ago
Why would any society that had lost all access to Asimovs foundation trilogy retain the knowledge to read one of these disks?
cohomologo 9y ago
From the ARCH foundation FAQ: Beyond the laser based digital layer there may also be layers that require the ability to detect and decode molecular, atomic scale or subatomic scale (quantum or holographic) information. We can already encode data in this way, but reading it requires very advanced technology. They seem so clueless that even if I bought into the underlying mission of preserving data by sending it into space, I wouldn't trust this group to do it.

62 points by john58 9y ago

j0e1 9y ago

I was intrigued recently reading a relevant blog post by Stephen Wolfram that made me think a lot more about this topic. Here is the link for those interested: http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2018/01/showing-off-to-the-universe-beacons-for-the-afterlife-of-our-civilization/ http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2018/01/showing-off-to-the-un... And its discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16269500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16269500

hawktheslayer 9y ago

The most fascinating part of all this for me is the way Musk thinks "past the sale". He, and others, are thinking about things like how the interplanetary internet would work while we are all still bound to earth. I want to do more of this type of thinking that focuses not on if but when.

debt 9y ago
"I want to do more of this type of thinking that focuses not on if but when." It involves shipping a lot of bugs so brace yourself.

Theodores 9y ago

Here is how it works: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-u... So it is really a variation on the 'Bubblegram' 3D laser printing in glass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegram The '5D' comes from the size and the orientation of the bits that get fused together deep in the glass. The original 3D printing in glass came out of Russia, so it is interesting that this '5D' science is kind of Russian. I think that with 3D laser printing in glass there was always a problem of 'what use is this?' and I am wondering if that quest resulted in the Asimov ideas and the pitch to SpaceX etc. I do not think that it is at all obvious that 'size' and 'orientation' matter to our binary trained brains, so making a machine capable of reading the disc and then reading it and then getting the schema right is a bit of an ask. The HotWheels toy car with Spaceman is the merch they need to be selling to get donations for this.

grkvlt 9y ago

What on earth are '5D optical storage techniques' when they're at home?

grkvlt 9y ago
So, from the Southampton link below: > The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructures. I still think this is a bit disingenuous, it is a three-dimensional encoding. Would people consider a colour photograph as encoding four dimensional information when its pixels are represented as (x, y, brightness, colour) for example? How many dimensions does writing have?
- jerf 9y ago
  "Would people consider a colour photograph as encoding four dimensional information when its pixels are represented as (x, y, brightness, colour) for example?" Actually, yes, they do. Computer vision people will envision a photograph as containing the number of dimensions equal to the number of independent numbers used to describe it, so a 1000x1000 RGB image would be considered 3,000,000-dimensional. This is perfectly routine in that world. Writing would be considered n-dimensional. http://www.mathwords.com/n/n_dimensions.htm http://www.mathwords.com/n/n_dimensions.htm In non-math terms you'd probably be justified in saying the question is ill-defined, as what constitutes an orthogonal vector component in a piece of writing is not something that has an universally-obvious answer. But it's not that there are 0 possibilities, it is that there is very many. In a nutshell, the word "dimension" does not simply describe 3-dimensional space, and all other uses are somehow wrong. Dimension applies to any independent element of a vector, and using it to describe spacetime is a tiny, tiny subset of the valid uses of the term. Another very common example is that describing the movement of a free floating in space rigid body is a twelve dimensional value; you need to describe x, y, and z (or equivalant), you need to describe the rotation around x, y, and z, and then you need to describe the velocity of each of those components. That's 12 dimensions. In fact, it's 12 dreadfully mundane dimensions. Incidentally, not included in valid uses of the term is the sci-fi sense of the term; "parallel dimension" is an oxymoron as it expands to "parallel perpendicular measurement", and "alternate dimension", especially with the idea that it is somehow "like" ours but just slightly different, is just a common scifi trope that is gibberish in real terms. I'd say that if one's concept of dimension isn't, as I said, "dreadfully mundane", it's not set up correctly. It's really a boring term; all the ways in which sci-fi makes it sound exciting or mysterious are not part of the real term. If you'd like to recover some of the sense of wonder associated with the term, I'd recommend learning about what it means to have a fractional dimension, in real mathematics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9n2gHsHN4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9n2gHsHN4

JackFr 9y ago

The first three Foundation books are good. Then Asimov went off the rails.

Animats 9y ago
All of the good Asimov books are in his first 100.

leonroy 9y ago

This is one piece of the puzzle certainly if man is going to look beyond Earth. If a Mars colony for instance was indeed established there would be some interesting data transfer and communication problems to work out in order to effectively transfer information and knowledge: Mars at its closest is 58 million km (36 million miles) away from Earth. It varies though and can be as far as 100 million km (63 million miles). That's about 192 seconds to 333 seconds of latency which an electromagnetic signal would have to traverse each way. I can't dig up what the maximum permissable latency of a TCP based network is but I'd imagine 5 minutes exceeds it. Even if you created a network in which a 5 minute latency is acceptable your throughput would be ridiculously low. There would likely have to be proxies and relays along the way to ensure acceptable performance but in itself the problem would require a lot of resources to effectively solve. I wonder if SpaceX is actively looking at offworld comms or if they hope organizations like Arch will attempt to solve it. Either way, an exciting time to be an engineer!

namirez 9y ago
Actually, Mars and Earth can be as far apart as 400 million km, which amounts to a latency of 1333 sec.
Robotbeat 9y ago
Already a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet
Xeoncross 9y ago
Wouldn't optical transmission (light) be much better? Both planets would have multiple satellites that would be the proxies between planets as one of them would always be able to "see" the others. Alignment would be tricky, but seems more promising with throughput.
- rohit2412 9y ago
  They said " electromagnetic signal ". Isn't light an electromagnetic signal?
9y ago

Slansitartop 9y ago

It would be really cool if you could order disks like this, but with your own data. Especially if they directly encoded images that could be read with a microscope.

outworlder 9y ago
There are many use cases for reliable, long-term storage. This is why some places still use microfilms. This could be a product by itself, and finance the whole enterprise.

tardo99 9y ago

Getting sort of tired of the SpaceX Circle Jerk all over the Internet. Go ahead and downvote me.

deusofnull 9y ago

i wonder what the I/O speed of those crystal drives are...

hughes 9y ago

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a roadster full of data storage crystals hurtling down the highway.

jlgaddis 9y ago
As long as you don't need reliable delivery!

comnetxr 9y ago

Why would any society that had lost all access to Asimovs foundation trilogy retain the knowledge to read one of these disks?

cohomologo 9y ago

From the ARCH foundation FAQ: Beyond the laser based digital layer there may also be layers that require the ability to detect and decode molecular, atomic scale or subatomic scale (quantum or holographic) information. We can already encode data in this way, but reading it requires very advanced technology. They seem so clueless that even if I bought into the underlying mission of preserving data by sending it into space, I wouldn't trust this group to do it.