Re:Musk files to provide Internet service from space
by lmm on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @06:31AM
(#9691038)
Commodity hardware goes obsolete quickly and fails frequently. Satellite-grade hardware is much older and slower than what we use for today's websites. Putting anything into orbit is expensive. Energy is much more expensive in orbit than on the ground. And it's not like the majority of your customers are going to be satellite internet users.
Re:Musk files to provide Internet service from space
by Rebelgecko on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @02:25AM
(#9690369)
If you use regular hardware you'd have to worry about bits getting flipped by radiation, which could cause some big problems depending on what your server is doing. Unfortunately radiation-resistant hardware is super expensive (maybe not a problem) and super slow (probably a problem)
Re:Musk files to provide Internet service from space
by kiba on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @12:53AM
(#9690120)
You're not going to have much computational capability especially given the mass.
Re:Musk files to provide Internet service from space
by greglindahl on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @12:54AM
(#9690128)
It's much cheaper to build a server into each ground station.
Solar energy + lower latency. Cooling is still a problem in vacuum though.