Sci/Tech Why We Need a Supercomputer on the Moon

tom_mai78101

tom_mai78101

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Should we build a supercomputer on the moon?

It would be a mammoth technical undertaking, but a University of Southern California graduate student thinks there’s a very good reason for doing this: It would help alleviate a coming deep-space network traffic jam that’s had NASA scientists worried for several years now.

Ouliang Chang floated his lunar supercomputer idea a few weeks ago at a space conference in Pasadena, California. The plan is to bury a massive machine in a deep dark crater, on the side of the moon that’s facing away from Earth and all of its electromagnetic chatter. Nuclear-powered, it would process data for space missions and slingshot Earth’s Deep Space Network into a brand new moon-centric era.

“Once the physical infrastructure backbone is laid out, I suspect it would look much like the monolith excavation site in Clarke and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey,” says Chang’s course supervisor Madhu Thangavelu, of USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering.

www.wired.com

Why We Need a Supercomputer on the Moon

Should we build a supercomputer on the moon? It would be a mammoth technical undertaking, but a University of Southern California graduate student thinks there’s a very good reason for doing this: It would help alleviate a coming deep-space network traffic jam that’s had NASA scientists worried...
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Accname

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Yeah, and how do you do the maintenance?
Wanna send a spaceshuttle with a bunch of tech/it guys to the moon every other month?
 
tom_mai78101

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Accname said:
Yeah, and how do you do the maintenance?
Wanna send a spaceshuttle with a bunch of tech/it guys to the moon every other month?
Click to expand...

My assumption is that when we achieve the milestone of setting up a super computer on the Moon, we would already be able to set up a lunar base. There probably will be monthly shipments of supplies and equipments sent to the lunar base unmanned, and that the lunar base will have a dozen or so scientists busy working here and there.
 
Accname

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tom_mai78101 said:
My assumption is that when we achieve the milestone of setting up a super computer on the Moon, we would already be able to set up a lunar base. There probably will be monthly shipments of supplies and equipments sent to the lunar base unmanned, and that the lunar base will have a dozen or so scientists busy working here and there.
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Sounds reasonable.
Who is going to pay the 13 brajillion dollarz?
 
Varine

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We'd have a base there for repairs....
 
Varine

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I would prefer to fund this than the vast majority of what my taxes go to. This at least reaches for a real achievement, rather than some moronic illusion of progress that most of the world has put up with for the past several decades.
 
tom_mai78101

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FireCat said:
The "taxpayers", of course. ;)
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No, only those who are able to fund such an expedition will go forth with it. The way I see it, if the Lunar Base has been planned by major countries, then, instead of taxpayers, they will start claiming lands on the Moon. Antartica will get lonely.
 
Accname

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I'd say this whole "lunar base" and "supercomputer" stuff is only really useful if you go all-in with it.
We dont need such a "lunar base" with our current space programs. But we might need it if we expand the space programs more.
If you build that lunar base/super computer now but dont send any more space shuttles or probes out its pretty pointless, a waste of money and labour.
If you do it, do the full program, everything less will be a waste.
 
FireCat

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tom_mai78101 said:
No, only those who are able to fund such an expedition will go forth with it. The way I see it, if the Lunar Base has been planned by major countries, then, instead of taxpayers, they will start claiming lands on the Moon. Antartica will get lonely.
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That depends on what kind of people you are talking about! Well, I'm pretty sure, The government would provide some financial support. And that's does mean "your money!"
Anyway, It's a crazy idea. And Imagine, It would "brake down after two minutes!" LOL LOL
 
Varine

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FireCat said:
That depends on what kind of people you are talking about! Well, I'm pretty sure, The government would provide some financial support. And that's does mean "your money!"
Anyway, It's a crazy idea. And Imagine, It would "brake down after two minutes!" LOL LOL
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Interplanetary colonization has to start somewhere.
 
Varine

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Because people have attitudes like that.
 
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FireCat said:
Maybe, but now it's Just a dream.. And It won't happen in the near future.
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You can probably fly there with your self-driving cars!
On your flight you can watch movies and play 3D games on your smartphone.
Dude, sign me in! Starwars is a joke compared to this.
 
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