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This should be really interesting to do with public key cryptography. Generate an RSA private key and corresponding 32+ kbit RSA public key. Send off the priva

by DCKing 12y ago

This should be really interesting to do with public key cryptography. Generate an RSA private key and corresponding 32+ kbit RSA public key. Send off the private key to Mars, and afterwards publish the public key. Award €50 billion to the party which can prove possession of the private key and give a demonstration of how it was obtained. Anyone claiming the price has either: - Gone to Mars and returned with the private key - Broken the prime factorization problem from a theoretical perspective - Built a practical quantum computer and thereby broken the prime factorization problem practically Admittedly, the first and last would be big advancements for humandkind, but the second one would probably mostly give some really nasty problems.

Gravityloss 12y ago
That sounds excellent, though 50 billion is a bit too much. Say 10 billion? You could send stuff to Jupiter's moons, to asteroids or to Mercury as well. It would need to have some kind of a passive beacon to aid retrieval and prove that it is there. On Mars dust is a problem so a retroreflector might not hold up for long.
- DCKing 12y ago
  Ah, I falsely remembered hearing quotes on a sample return mission to be $20 billion, and was factoring in estimation errors and profit incentives. Mars should be the first goal, I think. IANAP, but I think Jupiter's moons and Mercury are very substantially harder to collect samples from when compared to Mars. For Mercury it would be very difficult to escape the Sun's gravity well and get enough momentum to return to Earth orbit. Jupiter is also much further away than Mars and has a huge gravity well to escape from too. I'd wager that sample return missions are possible to them practically even given unlimited budget.
  - Gravityloss 12y ago
    You'd likely read the data in situ and just beam the info back. That's orders of magnitude easier than sending anything back here.

by DCKing 12y ago

Gravityloss 12y ago

That sounds excellent, though 50 billion is a bit too much. Say 10 billion? You could send stuff to Jupiter's moons, to asteroids or to Mercury as well. It would need to have some kind of a passive beacon to aid retrieval and prove that it is there. On Mars dust is a problem so a retroreflector might not hold up for long.

DCKing 12y ago
Ah, I falsely remembered hearing quotes on a sample return mission to be $20 billion, and was factoring in estimation errors and profit incentives. Mars should be the first goal, I think. IANAP, but I think Jupiter's moons and Mercury are very substantially harder to collect samples from when compared to Mars. For Mercury it would be very difficult to escape the Sun's gravity well and get enough momentum to return to Earth orbit. Jupiter is also much further away than Mars and has a huge gravity well to escape from too. I'd wager that sample return missions are possible to them practically even given unlimited budget.
- Gravityloss 12y ago
  You'd likely read the data in situ and just beam the info back. That's orders of magnitude easier than sending anything back here.