…and Mars, and anything that comes after that. This is one of the most consequential engineering decisions NASA has ever made, and could plausibly be the most important engineering decision NASA, the US government or humanity ever makes. Effective, reliable, standardized radio telecommunications is the key to meaningful science investigations on other planets. The network being planned here will create the Lunar economy, the Martian economy, and whatever other economy exists on other planets that use the same technology. The software packages used here will probably still be used/supported in some way towards the end of this century, if not also into the 22nd century. This is one of the most important programming, software, computer science and radio engineering jobs the world is doing right now .. underneath only AT&T’s PSTN, GPS, TCP/IP (ie, the entire Internet as we know it), nuclear power plants and weapons.
This really should have been done fifty years ago in the 1970s, but back then the idea of an digital computer network was still so new and novel where the concept of an off-world, non-terrestrial, space internet was too esoteric to be seriously planned.
1 Comment
…and Mars, and anything that comes after that. This is one of the most consequential engineering decisions NASA has ever made, and could plausibly be the most important engineering decision NASA, the US government or humanity ever makes. Effective, reliable, standardized radio telecommunications is the key to meaningful science investigations on other planets. The network being planned here will create the Lunar economy, the Martian economy, and whatever other economy exists on other planets that use the same technology. The software packages used here will probably still be used/supported in some way towards the end of this century, if not also into the 22nd century. This is one of the most important programming, software, computer science and radio engineering jobs the world is doing right now .. underneath only AT&T’s PSTN, GPS, TCP/IP (ie, the entire Internet as we know it), nuclear power plants and weapons.
This really should have been done fifty years ago in the 1970s, but back then the idea of an digital computer network was still so new and novel where the concept of an off-world, non-terrestrial, space internet was too esoteric to be seriously planned.
More about NASA’s Near Space Network can be read [here](https://www.nasa.gov/near-space-network/).