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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Exploration Strategy _ Lunar supercomputer?

Posted by: Phil Naranjo Oct 10 2012, 09:48 PM

A USC grad student is proposing that we build a supercomputer at one of the lunar poles:

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/supercomputer-moon/

The idea is to alleviate data overload issues with NASA Deep Space Network. It's a creative idea, although his proposed time-frame is too ambitious. Also, wouldn't it be cheaper to orbit an array of spaceborne antennas (at a Lagrange point) to act as a front-end for the DSN?

Posted by: djellison Oct 11 2012, 12:15 AM

It's crazy. Utterly crazy. The infrastructure required at a DSN site to succesfully receive those signals is enormous - utterly enormous. If you're going to upgrade the DSN, upgrade the DSN....you don't need to put any part of it on the moon to get the job done.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 11 2012, 12:56 AM

A solution looking for a problem - but he didn't pick a very realistic problem. A giant server farm for massive longterm data archiving maybe... others have suggested that. Anyway, not in the cards for a very long time.

Phil

Posted by: Astro0 Oct 11 2012, 06:26 AM

As someone who has an intimate knowledge of the DSN - the idea won't fly: literally or figuratively.
The Network needs an upgrade for sure, but on the ground.
Certainly not on the Moon - it's a long enough commute for me every day already!!