Category: Space Settlement

Will the First Mars Settlements have Internet Access?

A map on terrestrial internet. Credit: Lanet-vi program of I. Alvarez-Hamelin et al.

Imagine that you have just set up camp on Mars. Everything is up and running. You and your team have not only survived the journey from Earth, you’ve also made it through fiery re-entry and landed within a metre of your planned location. Success! So you crack open a miniature bottle of vintage whisky bottled in the year 2000 and share a sip with your companions. You want to tell the world, you want to check in with your family to say that you are “OK”.

It would be very poor if you were restricted to relaying a message though mission controllers. Simply “phoning home” for a chat wouldn’t be possible (the lag time between sentences would be at least 16 minutes). Could there be a way of sending emails? Possibly; voice messages will be fine too. But could our explorers set up a website or some “Mars blog” to document their travels? This could obviously be done remotely, with a terrestrial website, but there are strong arguments for a distributed Internet service on the Red Planet too. Can a “MarsNet” or “RedNet” be integrated with Earth’s Internet, establishing an “Interplanetary Internet”?
Continue reading “Will the First Mars Settlements have Internet Access?”

Building a Base on the Moon

Interconnecting modular-hangar based lunar habitat design. Image courtesy of Florian Ruess.

So mankind is beginning to reach into space. In the past, our efforts beyond the Earth’s atmosphere have been purely strategic and political. Now, scientific advancement is becoming a priority for government agencies and business opportunities are beginning to show themselves for private enterprise. So what’s the next step? If we are to make the ultimate push into space and actually live out there, we must use any natural resource to our advantage. Strategically speaking, the Moon is an ideal stepping stone for mankind to spread our influence beyond Earth. So where do we start?

Having just completed my “Building a Base on the Moon” series on the Universe Today, it is evident that we are gradually developing the right technology and moving in the right direction. But we have a long way to go before we accomplish the ultimate lunar habitat…
Continue reading “Building a Base on the Moon”