Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

When they launch these on orbit? Is there any smilar electronics on board?  ???

http://www.coindesk.com/jeff-garzik-announces-partnership-launch-bitcoin-satellites-space/

I've been hearing about how whales would eventually launch their own satellites which basically would be space nodes, guaranteeing we have nodes available even under the toughest scenario possible. I think that's amazing but I have no idea when it will actually happen. We need a guy like the Virgin guy in Bitcoin shooting BTC satellites, it's the ultimate step in decentralization.

I don't think this is really suited for this forum section.

Nonetheless, hm I never assumed that this project would actually be realised. It would require a significant profitability prospect.

Bitcoin transactions and blocks can be easily delivered using existing satellites.

There is no need to deliver special satellites for this purpose.

That is not the point, and no, existing satellites may not have the capabilities to serve as a full node and their operators are not people who would want to.

The specs are not that high though. According to this[1] post they use an ARM with 4 GB RAM and a 100GB SSD. Not sure about the predictions, but 100 GB does not sound like that satellite will still be up in 10 years.


[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/bitsat-project/2WFNsrcGhLs

Buy you also need ground infrastructure and the proper antennas to have enough bandwidth to get data to and from those satellites. Without a global network that can support sending up blocks and transactions immediately, such s node would be useless. And imagine trying to sync an existing satellite fully from scratch. Also existing satellites most likely only have specialized hardware for whatever they are doing and specialized software so they can't just install bitcoin core and use it.

Very likely yes. I also read that you need specific space hardened CPUs to avoid massiv bit flips due to the radiation. Very interesting topic. I guess I had expected a larger disk considering the price of SSDs isnt that high anymore. If you currently assume 56.000 MB and consistant 0.75 MB blocks the satellite is good for ~407 days. Which is nowhere near the life spam of a satellite[1]. I wonder why, as the SSD seems the least expensive part of the operation.

[1] http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1212/why-is-the-life-span-of-a-leo-satellite-less-than-that-of-a-geo-satellite