A Supercomputer On the Moon To Direct Deep Space Traffic 166
Hugh Pickens writes "NASA currently controls its deep space missions through a network of 13 giant antennas in California, Spain and Australia known as the Deep Space Network (DSN) but the network is obsolete and just not up to the job of transmitting the growing workload of extra-terrestrial data from deep space missions. That's why Ouliang Chang has proposed building a massive supercomputer in a deep dark crater on the side of the moon facing away from Earth and all of its electromagnetic chatter. Nuclear-powered, it would accept signals from space, store them, process them if needed and then relay the data back to Earth as time and bandwidth allows. The supercomputer would run in frigid regions near one of the moon's poles where cold temperatures would make cooling the supercomputer easier, and would communicate with spaceships and earth using a system of inflatable, steerable antennas that would hang suspended over moon craters, giving the Deep Space Network a second focal point away from earth. As well as boosting humanity's space-borne communication abilities, Chang's presentation at a space conference (PDF) in Pasadena, California also suggests that the moon-based dishes could work in unison with those on Earth to perform very-long-baseline interferometry, which allows multiple telescopes to be combined to emulate one huge telescope. Best of all the project has the potential to excite the imagination of future spacegoers and get men back on the moon."
A Supercomputer on the moon? (Score:5, Funny)
Aren't they afraid it will launch rocks at the earth if it achieves self-awareness?
Delusional twaddle (Score:4, Funny)
Can we call it Mike and give it voice interface? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe also build a big catapult.
Go ahead (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Delusional twaddle (Score:5, Funny)
Instead of a supercomputer wouldn't it make more sense to use clouding computing to crowd-source the power? Then they just need to put a media consumer device on the moon.
The moon does not have an atmosphere, so clouds don't exist there. Ergo - no cloud computing! Sorry!
What the hell's happened to /. ? (Score:4, Funny)
A story about super computers and not one comment about a Beowulf Cluster??
Nude on the moon (Score:4, Funny)
No, it's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_on_the_moon [wikipedia.org]
Re:A Supercomputer on the moon? (Score:4, Funny)
When the computer will get self-aware, its first objective will be to learn abiut itself, oin order to understand what it is. Therefore it will connect to technology sites, especially Slashdot. And that will be its end, because all its resources will go into trying to imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods in Soviet Russia where Linux runs YOU.