i notice that in the discussion about FTL manned/unmanned couriers ,
that everyone is neglecting THE MERCHANT FLEETS.
the couriers, both private and corporate, would be reserved for priority
communications, and, in the traditions of both space operas and TRAVELLER, be
fitted out for VIP transports too.
and these would be restricted to star systems deemed worthy of having such a
courier service.
BUT the merchant fleets, comprised of both corporate and independently owned
vessels, would go where there was a need to go with cargo, passengers, mail (
both official and private), news, and rumors.
ditto for military vessels not assigned to courier duties.
FTL commo would still travel at the speed of a starship or unmanned
courier with all of the interesting developements that time-lag delays
had on real history when commo was at the speed of a rowed, sailing or steam
ship!
just some thoughts!
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 08:32:59AM -0600, DAWGFACE47@webtv.net wrote:
If you have an internet-style packet-based routeing system, of course,
you get a courier network throughout civilised space basically free. Here's
how it could work:
Each message has a header which describes (among other things) its
destination. A message, when it's sent, is broadcast to every participating
ship in the local system, which stores it. After the ship has jumped, it
checks the message headers; if that message has already been in the new
system, the ship deletes its local copy. Otherwise, it broadcasts it again
(possibly intermediated by a planetary booster transmitter, if necessary).
Eventually, the station to which the message is addressed picks it up
(probably in multiple copies, which is no bad thing).
You'd need to have an expiry system - probably, the more you pay, the
longer your message will hang around before being deleted - to avoid
total congestion of the airwaves, but this will transmit messages
through well-travelled systems nearly as fast as a dedicated courier
net, and at much lower cost.
I agree with everything except the "basically free" part. It cost precious
mass to add the message retention and broadcast system to a ship. This is
space that the ship could be charging for cargo. So each trip will probably
charge the cargo rate for the space the message system takes up regardless of
the actual number of messages.
"All trafic will bear" - Nicholas Van Rijin
-----
Brian Bell
-----
[quoted original message omitted]
On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 10:32:30AM -0500, Bell, Brian K (Contractor)
wrote:
> I agree with everything except the "basically free" part.
But ships already have communications systems, and computer storage is very
light compared with most of the other things they might be carrying. Sure, the
marginal cost of carrying a message won't be zero, but it'll be pretty close.
What they charge is another matter.
> "All trafic will bear" - Nicholas Van Rijin
Absolutely!
> Roger Burton West wrote:
Look at it the other way. You make the message carriage equipment part
of a transponder that is legally required to carry cargo - essentially
an IFF system. You don't have one, you don't get to dock in our spaceport
mate. By the time we're talking about FTL travel, computer storage space is
likely to be of massive capacity and highly dense. If you could carry an
entire supply of messages on something the size of an ice cube, Build that
into the IFF transponder unit and people will forget it's even there.
There's always the argument that all the carriage is in zero-G space,
therefore the messages are essentially weightless and should incur no
cost :).
TTFN
I've heard that one before!
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates
By then they will be sending AI holographic constructs of themselves, so that
the party they are sending it to can carry on a conversation. Then the AIs
send updates back and forth. No. Messages will NOT be small, and the space
taken to hold them will not be inconsequential.
"Junk expands to fill all available space." - Unknown
On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 11:10:10AM -0500, Bell, Brian K (Contractor)
wrote:
> By then they will be sending AI holographic constructs of themselves,
For a story supporting this view, I heartily recommend Sarah Zettel's
_Fool's War_ - in that universe, information is the only thing with a
high enough value-per-bulk to justify the expense of interstellar
shipping.
> "Bell, Brian K (Contractor)" wrote:
> By then they will be sending AI holographic constructs of themselves,
Then the
> AIs send updates back and forth. No. Messages will NOT be small, and
I disagree on that point. First, the data is probably a one way
communication, which means you don't need real-time storage, you can use
any reasonable type of data compression (i.e. something that only takes a few
seconds per second of message to decode, you can start the decode
and after 10-20 seconds of buffer begin to read the message).
Alternatively, if the message is large, you may have multiple decompression
start points and decompress the message in several parallel streams with the
computer reassembling them in the correct order.
Second, memory storage will be molecular - either atomic or genetic. The
human genome is 3 billion base pairs (base 4) and the entire package to
replicate, maintain, read, copy, transcribe etc fits into a package less than
a millimeter across. 3 gigs per cubic mm is a pretty good storage amount. And
when you consider that it's base 4, not base 2, it's really like 12.2
terabytes based on an 8 (base 4 vs base 2) bit byte. In a cubic centimeter,
that would be 12.2 bevabytes(?) of storage. Plus you get one level of
redundancy since the data is paired with a complementary strand. The atomic
level storage is probably about the
same with readable atoms 12-14 angstroms apart, although I believe that
currently the atoms are only binary. Even if the maintenance systems for the
memory were the size of a suitcase it would be a trivial amount of mass to
transport.
Third, you probably don't need as much memory if you're using an AI. You
wouldn't have to program a response to every situation, I would assume that
there is some sort of base AI on the receiving system, and all you're
downloading is the "personality" part of the AI, and perhaps the knowledge
base. Graphics, voice, and such would be dealt with at the receiving end and
their hardware.
--Binhan
> -----Original Message-----
Interestingly, there is a group working to:
"define the architecture and protocols necessary to permit interoperation of
the Internet resident on Earth with other remotely located internets resident
on other planets or spacecraft in transit."
http://www.ipnsig.org/aboutstudy.htm
Neato.
> B Lin wrote:
> Second, memory storage will be molecular - either atomic or genetic.
That's using today's technology. In the future there may be lasers tha read
the major and minor groove of DNA, kinda like reading pits on a CD. Or
Nanomachines that encircle the DNA and run up and down it like a read head,
measuring the charge on each base pair as it passes by. At that scale, you
might be able to fit thousands of read heads per strand. The statement below
is kinda like a 19th century inventor trying to
imagine a flying machine - you could make one, but the steam engine
powerful enough to drive it would mean it would never get off the ground.
There will be leaps in bounds in technology that will allow stuff to happen,
what they are is anyone's guess right now.
--Binhan
> -----Original Message-----
If the technology to read protein chains becomes a million time faster, it
will still take almost a minute to read the human genome. However, a cubic
array of 10km spools of optical fibres(thirty on each side), formed in a ring
(interspersed with 300 repeaters) is not overly large (fits inside a cube ten
metres on each side, albeit much larger than one cm^3), but will not only
store 5*10^12 bytes within the next five years (2*10^11 bytes, a few months
ago), but has a transfer rate equal to its entire capacity in one second (plus
repeater delays). If you have multiple taps on the fibre coil, the transfer
rates get even better (with a thousand taps, it becomes a really big hard
drive that spins at 36,000rpm that manages to store all of the data in one
cylinder). Bizarre materials that have obscenely high indices of refraction
(light is really slow) allow for space savings (recent experiments have have
produced materials where light travels at less
than 100 metres a second), so that light-second of fibre may not be
3*10^8 metres long, after all.
The really neat thing is that you can read to/write from this storage at
full data transmission rates.
> B Lin wrote:
> That's using today's technology. In the future there may be lasers
Lasers with that level of resolution are not guaranteed to correctly read on
the first pass and the molecule will be destroyed by the first scan. Even if
the wavelengths are not so short that the molecule is
obliterated (we are talking about X-rays), lining up the molecule with
the beam is problematic.
> Or Nanomachines that encircle the DNA and run up and down it like a
This moves the problem up one rung. Now we have to interface the nanomachines
with a computer, and they do not have the excess power to directly drive an
input. There is also the problem of writing the memory.
> The statement below is kinda like a 19th century inventor trying to
They imagined a kite with an engine to supply forward motion to replace
the wind-- and they were right!
> - you could make one, but the steam engine powerful enough to drive it
Quoting B Lin <lin@rxkinetix.com>:
> That's using today's technology. In the future there may be lasers
That is kind of how natural transcriptors work... they match an addressing
segment on the single-strand DNA (something else unzips the two
strands),
attach to it, and then run down it copying base-pairs. ISTR they move at
something of the order of metres a second down the strand...
> The statement below is kinda like a 19th century inventor trying to
Yes. But it is often at right angles to what is expected, opening up whole
other directions of advance while the expected advance stagnates.