4 ms·

In my utopia, everyone would have access to something like this and the internet would be free from the chains of corporate greed. There's a lot to overcome (h

In my utopia, everyone would have access to something like this and the internet would be free from the chains of corporate greed. There's a lot to overcome (having everything be completely decentralized), but a person can dream...

reaperducer 8y ago
50 years ago the notion of everyone having their own computer (or several!) would have been laughable. Perhaps in the next 50 years people will have their own personal satellites in orbit and we will achieve your goal.
- penagwin 8y ago
  Getting a satellite into space is ~50,000$ for a 1U cube sat when I looked around. You might be able to get NASA or somebody to send it up for free if it's educational and they have room. So it's getting cheaper for sure! While that's certainly not the cheapest, it's now within reach of small startups/passionate makers which is exciting!
  - 420codebro 8y ago
    $50K - wow that is really cheap to put something into orbit.
  - convolvatron 8y ago
    curious - is a cubesat enough of a footprint to gather enough solar energy to act as an RF relay until the orbit decays?
  - monocasa 8y ago
    More likely in 50-100 years is manufacturing capacity in space gets to the point that building a 1u satellite up there is way cheaper than sending from a deep gravity well like Earth's. I imagine at some point, rockets will only be used for sending people and other things that can't be transmitted or manufacturered.
    - jonfw 8y ago
      Still going to pay transport costs on getting raw materials to space, although I imagine raw mats will be densers and the volume savings will reduce costs.
      - monocasa 8y ago
        There's plenty of raw materials in space via asteroid mining, particularly everything you need for satellites.
        penagwin 8y ago
        But on currently on earth we have many massive factories to collect, refine, and process just the raw materials. Those factories will require massive amounts of resources to boot, and we don't start with any resources in space....
        monocasa 8y ago
        Right, so it's a bootstrapping question. If this was your long term goal, you'd right now be working on reusable rockets that you'd soon be using at cost to send up large quantities of infrastructure (cough cough Blue Origin and Space X, Space X being further along and openly talking about Starlink). Next step is mining asteroids for stuff like platinum and dropping it down to earth. Step after that is manufacturing with those raw materials in micro G. Now you have a complete manufacturing chain without gravity wells, and ostensibly a multi trillion dollar company.
        ngold 8y ago
        This is the exciting future of space. I love that comment sections are inevitably choked up with people say can't or won't since it's easy to say no.
penagwin 8y ago
You'll either need a mesh network (higher latency) or you'll need a backbone (which is an ISP) so you'll still run into similar issues. Not to mention at the lower bands you have limited bandwidth, not just for yourself but for everyone, so bandwidth congestion will become a huge issue if everyone used it for internet. That said I do hate my ISP (and most others) with a burning passion so...
- beamatronic 8y ago
  Could a mesh network be created on existing WiFi hardware? For example with a firmware refresh / OpenWRT? Then it’s just a matter of mass adoption / critical mass in neighborhoods.
  - zamadatix 8y ago
    Technically yes, practically no. Half duplex in a shared medium radio hardware just does not scale to neighborhood sized meshes well.
    - bullen 8y ago
      I'm trying to figure out a way to get small messages to transfer over P2P radio: http://radiomesh.org http://radiomesh.org
      - zamadatix 8y ago
        I've been having great success with https://www.crowdsupply.com/ronoth/lostik https://www.crowdsupply.com/ronoth/lostik It has both a Lora mode and raw radio mode, I've been utilizing the raw radio mode.
        bullen 8y ago
        Ok, neat! What language are you programming in? I'm going to use Java, the tricky parts will be to build the frequency hopping (for me 410-525MHz) + power lowering (-1-+14/+20dBm) parts so that densely populated areas can function properly.
jrockway 8y ago
You can decentralize the internet on the ISM bands; for example, https://www.nycmesh.net/ https://www.nycmesh.net/
microcolonel 8y ago
You have access to this, you just don't want it. I like the cushion of corporate incentive which holds up the vast majority of the internet infrastructure. It is very inexpensive to access it, and it remains relatively open. Just because you don't have experience operating or directing a corporation, doesn't mean they are all evil entities which ruin everything.
- chooseaname 8y ago
  > Just because you don't have experience operating or directing a corporation, doesn't mean they are all evil entities which ruin everything. This is HN, can we be above personal attacks please? You don't know me.
gcb0 8y ago
because finding a unpoluted wifi channel in a densely populated are is not hard enough already...

reaperducer 8y ago

50 years ago the notion of everyone having their own computer (or several!) would have been laughable. Perhaps in the next 50 years people will have their own personal satellites in orbit and we will achieve your goal.

penagwin 8y ago
Getting a satellite into space is ~50,000$ for a 1U cube sat when I looked around. You might be able to get NASA or somebody to send it up for free if it's educational and they have room. So it's getting cheaper for sure! While that's certainly not the cheapest, it's now within reach of small startups/passionate makers which is exciting!
- 420codebro 8y ago
  $50K - wow that is really cheap to put something into orbit.
- convolvatron 8y ago
  curious - is a cubesat enough of a footprint to gather enough solar energy to act as an RF relay until the orbit decays?
- monocasa 8y ago
  More likely in 50-100 years is manufacturing capacity in space gets to the point that building a 1u satellite up there is way cheaper than sending from a deep gravity well like Earth's. I imagine at some point, rockets will only be used for sending people and other things that can't be transmitted or manufacturered.
  - jonfw 8y ago
    Still going to pay transport costs on getting raw materials to space, although I imagine raw mats will be densers and the volume savings will reduce costs.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      There's plenty of raw materials in space via asteroid mining, particularly everything you need for satellites.
      - penagwin 8y ago
        But on currently on earth we have many massive factories to collect, refine, and process just the raw materials. Those factories will require massive amounts of resources to boot, and we don't start with any resources in space....
        monocasa 8y ago
        Right, so it's a bootstrapping question. If this was your long term goal, you'd right now be working on reusable rockets that you'd soon be using at cost to send up large quantities of infrastructure (cough cough Blue Origin and Space X, Space X being further along and openly talking about Starlink). Next step is mining asteroids for stuff like platinum and dropping it down to earth. Step after that is manufacturing with those raw materials in micro G. Now you have a complete manufacturing chain without gravity wells, and ostensibly a multi trillion dollar company.
        ngold 8y ago
        This is the exciting future of space. I love that comment sections are inevitably choked up with people say can't or won't since it's easy to say no.

penagwin 8y ago

You'll either need a mesh network (higher latency) or you'll need a backbone (which is an ISP) so you'll still run into similar issues. Not to mention at the lower bands you have limited bandwidth, not just for yourself but for everyone, so bandwidth congestion will become a huge issue if everyone used it for internet. That said I do hate my ISP (and most others) with a burning passion so...

beamatronic 8y ago
Could a mesh network be created on existing WiFi hardware? For example with a firmware refresh / OpenWRT? Then it’s just a matter of mass adoption / critical mass in neighborhoods.
- zamadatix 8y ago
  Technically yes, practically no. Half duplex in a shared medium radio hardware just does not scale to neighborhood sized meshes well.
  - bullen 8y ago
    I'm trying to figure out a way to get small messages to transfer over P2P radio: http://radiomesh.org http://radiomesh.org
    - zamadatix 8y ago
      I've been having great success with https://www.crowdsupply.com/ronoth/lostik https://www.crowdsupply.com/ronoth/lostik It has both a Lora mode and raw radio mode, I've been utilizing the raw radio mode.
      - bullen 8y ago
        Ok, neat! What language are you programming in? I'm going to use Java, the tricky parts will be to build the frequency hopping (for me 410-525MHz) + power lowering (-1-+14/+20dBm) parts so that densely populated areas can function properly.

jrockway 8y ago

You can decentralize the internet on the ISM bands; for example, https://www.nycmesh.net/ https://www.nycmesh.net/

microcolonel 8y ago

You have access to this, you just don't want it. I like the cushion of corporate incentive which holds up the vast majority of the internet infrastructure. It is very inexpensive to access it, and it remains relatively open. Just because you don't have experience operating or directing a corporation, doesn't mean they are all evil entities which ruin everything.

chooseaname 8y ago
> Just because you don't have experience operating or directing a corporation, doesn't mean they are all evil entities which ruin everything. This is HN, can we be above personal attacks please? You don't know me.

gcb0 8y ago

because finding a unpoluted wifi channel in a densely populated are is not hard enough already...