Mars One Studying How To Maintain Communications With Mars 24/7

braindrainbahrain writes "Mars One, the low-credibility effort to colonize Mars, is at least funding some interesting concept studies for their alleged plan to colonize the red planet. One of the most interesting is the effort to maintain uninterrupted communications with Mars. This is not as trivial as it may sound, as any satellite in Martian orbit will still have to deal with occultations between Mars and Earth due to the Sun. Surrey Satellite Technology will be performing the study."

Identical twins

[myowntrueself]

Send one twin to mars, the other twin stays on Earth. They telepathically communicate. Oh wait, wrong novel?

What't the point of this?

[frovingslosh]

So if we do manage to send the ship with all of the bureaucrats and hair stylists and telephone sanitizers to Mars, what is the point of trying to maintain communications 24/7? After all, pretty much anything that you do without science fiction technology is going to have a round trip delay of up to 1/2 hour or so at some times. The "colony" has to be pretty damn independent. I don't see any real need to convince yourself that you have 24/7 communications with delays like they would experience. Even daily communication would need some sort of relay when the sun gets in the way, but trying for 24/7 is overkill and pointless.

Re:Quantum Telegraph

[isorox]

You mean utilize quantum entanglement? Maybe by the time someone is actually ready to go to Mars, they'll have developed the idea far enough to actually do it. Until then: Lasers.

Yes, a laser so powerful it will punch a hole through the sun.