Interplanetary Internet Puns

Suppose humans have settled on Moon and Mars, how would the internet work ?

Moon and Earth is simple as they are not far away. But what about Mars?

What will be the Infrastructure for it ?

According to my thinking -

Mars Ground Station to Mars Geo satellites , which would power up that signal then relay to earth. The transmission would have to be Laser Communication, powered by Solar energy.As for Local Mars Communication, a Starlink kind of project.

What are your thoughts?

So it occurs to me that by the time people are transmitting large amounts of data between planets computers will be very powerful (because future) and that the thing about sending data to someplace that's anywhere from light-minutes to light-days away is that your effective bandwidth would be abysmal. It would seem to me that these two factors would favor extreme compression algorithms. I have a couple ideas:

The first is to take advantage of irrational numbers. They are, by definition, infinite and non-repeating, so every possible finite string of numbers will appear in them somewhere--and so the message you send can be something like "take pi, start at position X, count out Y places." This can also result in a long message, but you can repeat this an arbitrary number of times and can optimize since you're not beholden to a single number--the number you get based on the example above, translated through conventional algorithms, could read "take phi, start at position W, count out Z place."

The other idea I had was to take the message you want to send and "round" it to the nearest highly composite number (aka anti-prime), which you then factor out to primes, which will result in an equation that looks something like 2^(a)3^(b)5^(c)...+N where N is the difference between the highly composite number and the message you're trying to send. Now, because of the way binary works you don't actually save a lot of space by using powers (or so I've heard), but here we can take advantage of some properties of highly composite numbers. First, they never skip a prime, so if both computers know what they're doing you can reduce the message being sent to a, b, c, ... N. Second, the powers of the primes must weakly decrease, so you can do even better than that: (a-b), (b-c), (c-d), ... N. This is also a repeatable operation.

I imagine supercomputers trying several combinations of compression schemes on a given message to see which one is shortest before sending it.

Thoughts? Better ideas for algorithms?

The internet is a great thing and it is hard to imagine a futuristic civilization without it. But I feel like there are some aspects of it, that are often forgotten about, when we think about the vast distances between celestial bodies.

Of course, light lag comes to mind first. But while that would be merely inconvenient, I am sure there is more that could be integrated into a hard sci-fi setting that might be otherwise glossed over e.g. what are the consequences of suddenly having another planet between you and a satellite of choice, which is currently orbiting another body in the Solar system?

Given the hard limit we have with communication speeds, how do you think a network like this would work?

UPDATE: Thanks everyone for your questions and comments. Huge thanks to Inverse for inviting me to this AMA. Signing off.

I’m Ben Lamm, CEO of Hypergiant Industries. We’re an Austin-based company that’s developing interplanetary internet access, an algae bioreactor that can sequester as much CO2 as an acre of trees, and an AR - helmet that creates more situational awareness for search-and-rescue teams.

At Hypergiant Industries, our mission is to create emerging AI-driven technologies and develop world-changing commercial products and solutions that save lives, improve critical infrastructure, efficiently harness energy, further space travel and advance humanity’s position in the universe. Before Hypergiant, I previously co-founded four companies.

You can learn more about our different divisions here.

• Space Age Solutions
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Follow me on Twitter and read more on my website. Also follow us on Instagram @hypergiant.

Proof: https://twitter.com/inversedotcom/status/1194031822226808832

Let’s talk about future tech together!

Hi, we're NASA engineers working on space communications technologies that will help create an interplanetary internet. When data travels vast distances like the 30+ million miles to Mars, the potential for delay or disruption is significant! Network disruption in space can happen because of limited contact time and atmospheric effects. NASA communications technology called 'disruption-tolerant networking' (DTN) allows for temporary disruptions and long delays, unlike the familiar computer to computer IP connection. DTN can also provide tremendous benefits to missions closer to Earth and terrestrial applications. That's what we're working on, and it has the potential to improve data transmission for virtually all of NASA's missions.

We are:

Vint Cerf, Distinguished Visiting Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Dave Israel, Exploration and Space Communications Architect, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Adam Schlesinger, Technical Lead, Advanced Exploration Systems Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking Project, NASA’s Johnson Space Center

Scott Burleigh, Principal Engineer, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Kelvin Nichols, International Space Station ground systems engineer, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

Dr. Keith Scott, The MITRE Corporation

For more information on disruption-tolerant networking, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/content/dtn Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at @NASA_TDRS, @NASALasercomm and @NASASCaN!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/dvbyvj/im_ben_lamm_ceo_of_hypergiant_industries_the/

UPDATE: Thanks for all the questions. We've wrapped. Check out the main thread for any follow ups.