back to article MARS NEEDS BROADBAND, insists Elon Musk

Another day, another billionaire with a broadband-in-space plan. Last week's unconvincing launch came from Virgin's beardy Branson, who reckons 6,498 satellites are enough to do the job of bringing broadband to the next billion. Now Elon Musk of Tesla, SpaceX and Hyperloop fame has let Bloomberg Businessweek know that he …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Data networks on Mars?

    Surely the first settlement will be all in one place, and people aren't going to be living all over the planet. If they are, they can deal with GSO latencies to talk to the other country's (presumably) settlement - they'll be rather used to it given the latencies involved communicating with Earth!

  2. Knoydart
    Thumb Down

    Never learned anything from history?

    Those fine young men with their flying machines need to read the history of Teledesic and then decide if its a good way to blow a wad of cash?

  3. hplasm
    Devil

    Newsflash 2050

    Mars Colony 3 still has faster broadband than UK.

  4. The Vociferous Time Waster

    At last

    a use case for v6

    1. choleric

      Re: At last

      Not quite. We need IPv6 on earth already. And it won't necessarily work well for interplanetary comms. Actually what's needed is a modification to TCP/IP together. There are RFCs (4838, 5325) on the topic, and obviously Wikipedia too, if you are interested.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: At last

      Considering the uptake rate of IPv6 and how long it's been around, we should probably be looking at IPv7/8/9/10 in anticipation of the Galactic Federation, otherwise there'll be this whole interstellar NATting problem all over again.

    3. Long John Brass

      Re: At last

      Didn't one of the IP(v4) dads set out to design an "interplanetary" internet?

      Personally I always thought that a bastardized version of Fido net(tm) would be a far better solution for such a high latency network. a 4 hour lag means hitting a website is impractical. Mail & file transfer is all you need in this case. Even Mars is what, a minimum delay of around 4 minutes and the maximum of around 24 minutes?

      *sniff* ... Is it sad that I miss the sounds of zone mail hour? *WOOF*

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: At last

        "Personally I always thought that a bastardized version of Fido net(tm) would be a far better solution for such a high latency network."

        Such an animal has existed FAR longer than Fight-o-net (and it's hellaciously more flexible. F-net is better described as "fucked up networking" in terms of the munging it does to Usenet/email on the way through)

        Use your search-fu to find UUCP

  5. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Wrong question altogether

    The question is, does the remaining one billion have the money to pay their Virgin Broadband bill.

    Monthly 40£ per head? In Subsaharan Africa? Do not think so. You are looking at more like 0.4£ per head (tops).

    So, frankly, doing something about getting that region out of poverty should probably come first. As a side effect this will go a long way in fighting at least some of our other problems such as the refugee crisis, extremism, etc.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Wrong question altogether

      >So, frankly, doing something about getting that region out of poverty should probably come first [before broadband internet].

      Well, that depends upon whether access to to broadband internet can help to get the poorest people out of poverty. It's complex, so I won't call it either way. There is potential for broadband internet to help with education, access to market data, organisation of people into groups to better represent their interests. There is potential for abuse, too.

      Even if broadband didn't actively help get these people out of poverty, it might be that Branson is taking a punt on them becoming wealthier over time anyway, in which case by the time they can afford his broadband services his infrastracture will already be in place.

      BTW, the £40 monthly bill in the UK is for the fast 50Mb cable broadband. The term 'broadband' is also used in the UK for copper wire internet (2 Mbs and up), for which the consumer is charged much less.

      I've just tried to dig up the speech Arthur C Clarke gave on the launch of the first satellite to provide India with satellite television (reproduced in the book 'Greetings! Carbon Based Bipeds'). He speaks optimistically about the potential using it to cheaply deliver health and agriculture information to millions of rural people, and his concern "what a shame if it is merely used to peddle soap".

      1. MacroRodent

        Re: Wrong question altogether

        A case of diminishing returns. It has been argued quite convincingly that getting some kind of eletronic messaging to everyone does "lift people out of powerty" by making the markets more efficient (see the article on sardine fishers in Kerala, a few weeks back on this august web site). But that can be achieved with GSM. It could be broadband just adds access to kitten videos...

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: Wrong question altogether

          "It has been argued quite convincingly that getting some kind of eletronic messaging to everyone does "lift people out of powerty" by making the markets more efficient"

          When I was in Burma 2 years ago, it wasn't unusual in the countryside to see a bloke on an oxcart (as in, a real Ox and something with wooden spoked wheels) blathering away on a mobile phone on his way into town - he was arranging sales of his products do that all deals were done before he even stopped at the first port of call.

          Mobile phones in burma are _extremely_ expensive, but they more than pay for themselves in terms of increased sales and sale prices.

  6. RISC OS

    The kind of people that want to check their twitter feed and facebook wall as soon as they land are the kind of people who shouldn't be selected for the trip to mars in the first place.

    1. Little Mouse

      I beg to differ...

      "The kind of people that want to check their twitter feed and facebook wall as soon as they land are the kind of people who shouldn't be selected for the trip to mars in the first place."

      Sure about that? It WILL most likely be a one-way trip, don't forget.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      I suspect that's exactly the people we ought to be sending on the first 'B' Ark to Mars.

      Hang on! Is that a space goat? AAAAAaaaarrggggg!!!!

  7. DJV Silver badge

    Internet on Mars?

    No problem with latency if they just send a copy of the whole thing - it's small enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg

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