Comments on: Why we need a supercomputer on the Moon

By: steve

steve — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:01:53 +0000

because NASA has only one purpose and that is to piss away as much money as possible, the steering committee meeting for this idiocy went like this…probably!
‘so Mr Chang you want to build a nuclear powered supercomputer?’
‘yes’
‘hell son why don’t we go the whole way and put the bloody thing on the moon?’
MC ‘ Oooh can we? the dark side would be cool…

By: melajara

melajara — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:13:40 +0000

Mr.X by antiphrase was meaning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOW4QiOD-oc, IMHO, Mr.X LOVES irony ;-)

But you knew it and just piled up irony upon irony and I’m just a pedantic moron making unnecessary exegesis for the rest of us, LOL

By: Marcos Marin

Marcos Marin — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:48:06 +0000

And still live like a king forever after =)

By: gaoptimize

gaoptimize — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:10:26 +0000

The show-stopper on this idea is the schedule of large space projects and the inevitable progress in computer performance. Let’s assume this project is as complex an the International Space Station. By the time the 15 to 20 years to deploy it have gone by, there will be more storage and processing in a cell phone and the Singularity will be upon us.

By: Bri

Bri — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 06:44:51 +0000

The main reason they chose the dark side of the moon was to sheild and bury it from stray cosmic radiation. They are also envisioning a large facility like we have in server farms on earth. That’s why I proposed geosynchronous satellites around the moon.. They could be shielded from sun storms and be quite modular in form. This would also facilitate upgrading, as tech advances, instead of being so locked into a underground facility. Older satellites could be retrieved and upgraded much easier.

By: Bruce Wright

Bruce Wright — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 03:47:59 +0000

I’m not sure I understand why locating this on the Moon is such a great idea. Essentially everything about building and maintaining a large data center is going to be much easier on the Earth; about the only technical advantage is that by locating it on the far side of the Moon you can avoid nearly all of the Earth-based radio waves so communications with remote probes would be somewhat improved. But you can also achieve pretty good results by using relay antennas in LEO or geosynchronous orbit, without the need to locate the entire data center in such an inaccessible place. Putting it on the Moon also doesn’t solve the need to get a major piece of that data back down to Earth in any event.

For what we’d pay to establish something like this on the Moon, we could probably expand the size of the Deep Space Network by a factor of 10 or more, and have a network that would be much easier to fix when anything went wrong.

The Moon does have some advantages for archival storage, in that it’s pretty much impervious to anything we might do to ourselves (or have done to us by a stray asteroid or the like). It wouldn’t be cheap though.

By: Marcos Marin

Marcos Marin — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:18:35 +0000

Dont bother dude, I lost count of how many wrongs there is in here.. the only reason which is not, as you appropriately put it, flawed, is the one they are not telling you. ;-)

By: Lord Penguin

Lord Penguin — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:19:07 +0000

Sounds like a good idea. Radiation might be hard to deal with; the entire system would have to either be radiation hardened or have a substantial radiation shield.

Jacques: Technology doesn’t progress on its own. If everyone sat around waiting for computers to get faster, or space technology to get better, nothing would get done. It’s projects like these that advance science and technology. And it isn’t just an experiment for building computers in space, it has current applications too, allowing us to better receive and process information from space.

By: Jacques Caillault

Jacques Caillault — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:53:41 +0000

This idea seems flawed for many reasons, but perhaps the fatal one is the ever-increasing rapidity of technical development. Even before the system were installed and running, it would be obsolete. Just consult the regularly-published list of most powerful supercomputers – it changes rapidly, and what was a mighty machine one year ago is now powering the latest version of the Sims!

By: Nancy

Nancy — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:00:19 +0000

The computer on the moon is practical, doable, and probably necessary. Somebody’s thinkin’!

BTW: The moon has a huge amount of accessible, processable titanium, not to mention other mineral resources.

Why tackle the much more challenging astroid mining when the moon has gravity??

By: Bri

Bri — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:59:37 +0000

What up X? You dont like disco?

By: Bri

Bri — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:54:02 +0000

Honestly my thoughts are more toward near earth activities. The moon has some resources that we can use. We don’t know enough about mars to say what will be available. It’s low gravity makes it a good launch and landing site. It’s also much closer to the asteroids. Some people say we should tow asteroids to near earth orbit. I think it’s a bad idea for a number of reasons. Hitting the earth is one. Mars would be easier, but to tow an asteroid or any significant amount of material from the asteroid belt is a hurculean task. The materials needs to have sufficient value to be worth it. Carbon is probably more important than the metals, also water. I just don’t think people realize how big a challenge it is. Near earth space tourism is probably the best investment. Empty seats means room or I should say reduced weight for payloads, to make the flights cost effective. Most mission should be to the moon and be robotic. The basalt is high in iron and aluminum. Manufacturing everything on the moon will reduce costs. Earth based materials could be tossed up in condensed form on very large rail guns. Higher orbit freighters could collect and ship the materials to near earth processing stages. That and moon materials could give us the right kind of machinery. Ion drives and solar sails could move that out to the asteroid belts.

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:17:58 +0000

cool, we can put that next to the monolith that is back there already….

http://skeptophilia.blogspot.com/2012/03/monolith-on-phobos-and-why-aliens-are.html

(yes, just being silly)

By: Mr.X

Mr.X — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:01:37 +0000

Time to die!

By: Bri

Bri — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:59:06 +0000

Ahh,ahh,ahh,ahh,ahh, stayin alive,stayin alive.

By: Stephen Willemse

Stephen Willemse — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:38:53 +0000

@Emaren

Think what Bri means is putting asteroids in orbit around Mars instead of Earth for mining ……I thought it was a good idea, can’t really tell if you are being sarcastic or not ? None the less first thing that needs to happen is the creation of an autonomous mining robot to extract minerals from gathered asteroids .

By: GAUSS

GAUSS — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:43:24 +0000

Asteroids: Mine ‘em.

Moon: Cyberland.

Mars: Space Discotech!

“Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother you’re just stayin alive, stayin alive…”

By: GAUSS

GAUSS — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:39:52 +0000

Good idea. :)

By: Emaren

Emaren — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:12:38 +0000

“Mars will be a good platform for asteroid mining. I don’t think anybody is going to be thrilled with towing an asteroid near the earth.”

Brilliant. Of the countless hours I’ve thought about this, that never occurred to me. THAT”S Why we need to get to Mars. So we can mine out the resource there first. C’mon Elon

By: Walter Baltzley

Walter Baltzley — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:50:35 +0000

Yes, and we will need to communicate with the armies of tele-presence robots we use to “mine the sky”. Robots are a lot sturdier than people and better suited for hard labor in outer space…that is, unless we decide to go all medieval and use prison / slave labor instead…

By: Walter Baltzley

Walter Baltzley — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:43:37 +0000

We also need a massive off-world memory cache to back up the world’s critical knowledge in case of some sort of global catastrophe…think Library of Congress 2.0…

By: Bri

Bri — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 12:25:45 +0000

Keep the super computer in space, in lunar orbit. Put the antennas on the dark side of the moon. Relay everything with smaller satellites in lunar orbit. In terms of space, we need to think of systems closer to earth, then the moon, then asteroids and mars. Mars will be a good platform for asteroid mining. I don’t think anybody is going to be thrilled with towing an asteroid near the earth. I’d hate for it to hit us, because it’s too bulky to maneuver easily.