I was over at the blog The Martian Chronicles reading the article "Would You Go?" which asked it's readers wether or not they would go on a one-way trip to Mars. The vast majority of commenters (and I) said they (I) would. When commenting, I thought of what I would do during my free time. See, one can be entertained for hours on end with the Internet. But, the Internet is not available in it's current form on Mars.
That [the long distances] rules out TCP,which requires the computer sending a message to get almost immediate acknowledgement of receipt from the computer that receives the message.The computer will continue to send messages only if it receives a steady stream of such receipts.The impossibility of immediate acknowledgement means TCP will not work over the distances of deep space. (1)
I thought one could take a personal intranet with information needed for the mission on physical memory, much like taking a Wikipedia CD collection to Mars. But, using YouTube on Mars would be fun. How would that work? The current version of the Internet on Mars is the Deep Space Network.
NASA currently communicates with interplanetary and Earth-orbiting missions using its Deep Space Network. The network consists of dishes in California, Spain, and Australia, which are manually set to receive transmissions from a given spacecraft. The main drawback of the Deep Space Network is that it relies on line-of-sight transmissions. That means rovers or astronauts on the far side of Mars must wait until they are back in the line of sight with Earth before sending a message home. To receive the message, the Deep Space Network dishes must be pointed in the right direction at the right time, or the signal will be lost forever. (2)
Meaning, if I were to send a message to Earth from Mars, I would have to send it, hope the message got to Earth and wait for a few hours for confirmation that the message got to it's destination. However, there is a better plan.
Image Credit: (3)
Imagine the Internet on Earth and a similar one on Mars, linked by satellites, which relay the information between the Internets. These special purpose satellites are called 'gateways'. Now think of it not only as two Internets, but a network of Internets, interconnected by a store-and-forward "overlay" network that forms the backbone across interplanetary space. Each Internet will have a local gateway.(4)
I think this is a very good idea, but I have input. How would I know if there was new content to request. I think there would need to be an index of the Earth's Internet on Mars plus an index of Mar's Internet on earth. This way, I could search the index for information located on another planet. Then, get it. It would need to be updated continuously, so my idea would take up a ton of bandwidth but it would allow for a fast search for information that can be accessed later.
It would have to work like a mail order. I need a catalog to see what a company has, I don't know wether or not a company would have ... tin foil pants without a catalog. Only with the catalog could I request the tin foil pants, which could then be shipped to me. But, the company must keep sending me new catalog every few months so I can see the updates. Otherwise, I could end up requesting tin foil pants which went out of production long ago and miss out on the recycled plastic pants which just came out. (That was the most ridiculous example ever.)
So, I could play Halo 3 over Xbox Live on Mars with the people on Earth. But, I could watch YouTube with a long delay as long as I have a catalog. It would work like this...
only without the real time voice. I did not find on other ways it could work, but please share your ideas.
Sources
(1): Hogie, Keith, Ed Criscuolo, Ron Parise. Putting More Internet Nodes in Space. April - June 2006. CSCWorld. 8 Feb. 2009 <http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/cleo/hogie-papers/hogie-cscworld-apr-jun-2006.pdf>
(2): Gray, Rich. On the Edge: Interplanetary Internet. 02 May 2003. Space.com. 8 Feb. 2009 <http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/ontheedge_0305.html>
(3) and (4): Ward, Deirdre, Rachel McDonnell, Micheal Tinney, Emer O'Donovan, Philip Kelly. The Internet In Space - What Is Happening?. Networks and Telecommunications Research Group. 8 Feb. 2009 <http://ntrg.cs.tcd.ie/undergrad/4ba2.02/space/index.html>
