Bitcoin Forum

One of the key tenets is that bitcoin block data is easy to distribute widely.  Information wants to be free.  One of the ways we may keep bitcoin healthy and free is finding alternative ways to distribute block chain data.  This provides resilience in case the P2P mesh network is attacked.

My personal favorite is satellite distribution, something I have been working on quietly in the background.  Satellites means one of two things:

• 1. Buy some bandwidth on an existing satellite.
• 2. Launch your own satellite.

Buying bandwidth is the most cost-effective, and readily attainable method today.  However, not just any satellite channel will do.  Bitcoin requires a dedicated, one-to-many broadcast mechanism.  This is like renting a TV channel -- although at much lower bandwidth requirements (1MB every minute or two).

Nanosatellites have recently cut satellite costs down from the absurd, traditional $20m+ build, $50m+ launch.  There is now a standardized cubesat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat) size.  Two innovations reduced launch costs down into the $100k's range: (1) Many organizations collaborate together (rideshare), paying a portion of the launch cost.  Sometimes 27 or more cubesats are launched at once.  (2) These clusters of cubesats are launched as a secondary payload.  A primary payload has priority, which means secondary payloads are sometimes not launched into a proper orbit.  With these two factors, cubesat construction and launch is lowered to a reachable price: $2m or so.

Several people, including some investors, in the bitcoin community have privately expressed interest.  It seemed like a good time to move forward with Phase 1 of the project.

Phase 1 is:   flesh out cubesat specifications, research leased bandwidth pricing, and specific data needs (xmit tech, frequencies).  The initial goal is broadcasting worldwide (or at least major continents) the latest bitcoin block, over and over again.  Stretch goals include broadcasting recent chains, recent TX's, and other data.

A word about government involvement:  Set expectations properly.  There are three points at which government is inevitably involved, at some level: (a) getting launch approval, (b) ground station(s) inevitably must be located in some useful geolocation, and (c) frequency selection.   Fundamentally, these satellites will be broadcasting public, not-encrypted blockchain data, so the content should not be an issue.

Donations accepted at 1M9MyyPsAak7zRjW4D96pTxDaAEpDDZLR7 (https://blockchain.info/address/1M9MyyPsAak7zRjW4D96pTxDaAEpDDZLR7)

Feb 05 update:

Project update #1: Permalink (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZHVudmVnYW5zcGFjZS5jb218ZHVudmVnYW4tc3BhY2Utc3lzdGVtcy1pbmN8Z3g6MWJjYzAyZDY0NTdlMmQ0MA)
BitSat architecture, v0.1: Permalink (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZHVudmVnYW5zcGFjZS5jb218ZHVudmVnYW4tc3BhY2Utc3lzdGVtcy1pbmN8Z3g6MjZjM2QwY2Y1ZDAwMDc0)

Files posted on http://bitsat.org/#/docs

Sponsors (1 BTC or more):

• Mohit Kalra (2 BTC, May 2014)
• Unknown (https://blockchain.info/tx/46bd63b44508dec10bca13ece35a9b85aac3c9460682d656f996d9114b8fc6f0) (1 BTC, Apr 2014)
• http://www.redstarmining.com/ (1 BTC, Jan 2014)
• Roger Ver (5 BTC, Dec 2013)
• Erik Voorhees (5 BTC, Dec 2013)
• Rusty Russell (1 BTC, Dec 2013)
• BitcoinGrant.org (25 BTC, Nov 2013)
• Jeff Garzik (1 BTC, Nov 2013)

Standard disclaimer:  This is a personal project.  Nothing to do with my employer.

Glad you brought this up Jeff.  I think this is a brilliant step forward to having Bitcoin transactions survive despite the internet being shut down.  I propose utilizing the existing amateur radio frequencies to propagate Blockchain transactions.  Satellites, in conjunction with converted wireless routers (HSMM-MESH), can enable a cheaply configured network that can operate with minimal electricity and no internet connection.  These transaction terminals can also be configured to have Bluetooth low energy attachments that would allow it to interface with mobile devices.  

Amateur Radio Rules

Under Title 47- Part 97 of the FCC amateur radio services, I believe transmitting Blockchain transmission is a good use of the amateur radio frequencies.  97.1 Basis and purpose  "(e) Continuation and extension of the amateur's unique ability to enhance international goodwill." And I don't see it violating any prohibited transmissions, this one in particular:

97.113 Prohibited transmissions "(2) Communications for hire or for material compensation, direct or indirect, paid or promised, except as otherwise provided in these rules" I believe Blockchain transmissions are not classified as material compensation, but rather a ledger update, or an information bulletin update. If the Blockchain protocol cannot be broadcast legally under Part 97, I recommend taking the concept in a direction that would comply with Part 15 rules.

Firmware

One popular way to access amateur only frequencies is to modify an off-the-shelf access point with custom firmware. This custom firmware is freely available on the Internet from projects such as DD-WRT and OpenWrt. The most popular piece of hardware that is modified is the Linksys WRT54GL because of the widespread availability of both the hardware and third party firmware.

Current Implementation

HSMM-MESH is meant to be the high speed digital progression of existing Amateur Radio practices and used only by licensed Amateur Radio operators. It also is suitable for permanent installation, providing high speed digital Amateur Radio communications over a region with line-of-sight RF access to at least one of the participating nodes.  It is a fully self-sufficient network and does not require any other infrastructure or resources to be in place for its participating nodes to be able to communicate with each other.

Broadband-Hamnet is the self configuring ham network.  Hams have transferred IP data by radio for ages.  Mesh nodes were originally consumer wireless routers but changed function when the firmware was changed.  Mesh nodes are self discovering, self configuring, self advertising and fault tolerant. Mesh nodes are small, portable, low-power and inexpensive. They are easily battery powered.  Mesh nodes can easily have a range of 10 miles or more using stock power and gain antennas if you have true line of sight. Mesh nodes on channels 1-6 use FCC part 97 rules instead of part 15. This allows big antennas, more power, other changes. Data is data. It can be IP Video, VOIP, LAN traffic between computers, clients to a web server/FTP/NAS/printer, keyboard chat, hop to the Internet, etc

Frequencies

802.11a
802.11b
802.11g
802.11n

Identification

As with any amateur radio mode stations must identify at least once every 10 minutes. One acceptable method for doing so is to transmit one’s call sign inside an ICMP echo request (commonly known as a ping). If the access point is set to "master" then the user’s call sign may be set as the "SSID" and therefore will be transmitted at regular intervals.

It is also possible to use a DDNS "push" request to automatically send an amateur callsign in plain text (ASCII) every 10 minutes. This requires that a computers hostname be set to the callsign of the amateur operator and that the DHCP servers lease time be set to less than or equal to 10 minutes. With this method implemented the computer will send a DNS "push" request that includes the local computers hostname every time the DHCP lease is renewed. This method is supported by all modern operating systems including but not limited to Windows, Mac OS X, BSD, and Linux. 802.11 hardware may transmit and receive the entire time it is powered on even if the user is not sending data.

Cheers,

Dan

I'll be interested to invest. Sounds like a crazy but awesome idea.

For Phase 1, dealing with investors/shareholders would just be far too annoying.  It would get in the way of getting things done.

Actually that gives me an idea, get Bitcoin on the ISS! I wonder how that could be arranged?


Really? Last time I check inanimate objects or concepts did not yearn for anything. :p

Many humans want information to be free.

Sure. Just because lots of people want information to be free does not mean information wants to be free. Information does not want anything.

Also many humans believe in an omnipotent being determining the outcome of their lives and watching over them, just because many want or believe does not make it right or true.

:p

It is an engineering statement.  Information is, in general, easy to copy and leak, and difficult to keep secret.

This is very true.

Do you think there is someway to get Bitcoin on the ISS?

Maybe put a bitcoin atm on the moon

Have you heard of PayPal Galactic? https://www.paypal-galactic.com/

PayPal is working on interplanetary payments.

Of course, Bitcoin is essentially ready for the universe, as long as there's internet.

I registered bitcoinsinspace.com back in 2012, envisioning something like this, and I would be happy to put it to use with this project.


If there is anything else I can do to help, please let me know.

Lining up a few aerospace engineers for Phase 1.

There is now a donation address set up for this project, and am currently hoping to raise $10-20k for Phase 1.

       1M9MyyPsAak7zRjW4D96pTxDaAEpDDZLR7 (https://blockchain.info/address/1M9MyyPsAak7zRjW4D96pTxDaAEpDDZLR7)

Or contact me privately if you want a one-time-use donation address, or if you want to be identified on the list of donors as someone other than "anonymous donor".  Wallet funds for this project are stored and securely separately from my personal funds, for the record.  This is a donation, not an investment.

Rough cost estimates of a single cubesat:

• 1x Cubesat hardware and construction: $60-100k
• Launch: $1m
• Miscellaneous: $900k (ground station uses, licensing, insurance, other details)

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Bitcoins space project donation address is

     1M9MyyPsAak7zRjW4D96pTxDaAEpDDZLR7

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Very pleased to announce a generous 25 BTC donation from BitcoinGrant.org, worth $27,000 as of this writing.

Updates will be posted to this thread (and eventually a website), once the aerospace engineers are fully contracted and engaged.

The meetings so far with engineers have been quite positive.  If the project proceeds as a non-profit, it is possible that amateur radio frequencies may be used for transmission, as another poster mentions upthread.

Good project Jeff.

During one of the meetings on this project, I learned that the ISS' Japanese module has a cubesat launcher...

Cool! I propose to hire Chuck Norris to put the satellite into orbit...  ;D

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120615045308/mugen/images/b/b6/Chuck-norris.png

Very interesting. Can i follow this project somewhere? Or just follow this thread?

This thread, for the moment.  A website should be up soon.

thats really crazy but bitcoin is crazy too  :P

Is the satellite designed on open hardware? Will the design and other specifics of that sort be public?

As much as possible will be open source and open hardware.

However, sometimes you have to choose between space-ready hardware for $, or developing your own open hardware for $$$$ + time.

Here's a crazy proposal: What if the sats were programmed to start mining if they don't see new blocks for too long; making it so that even if no one on the surface of Earth is mining, the network will continue on time?

If the ground station were to go down then a blockchain split could occur. Multiple ground stations and an open design for same would be beneficial.

Multiple ground stations are pretty much a given.  It is likely we will interact with a larger number of third party ground stations, rather than only run a few ground stations 100% ourselves.

A ground station can be pretty cheap.  A ground station can be as simple as a small satellite dish on top of a building, plus a controlling computer.

Frequency selection will be one of the biggest decisions.  That will trickle down to the ground stations (transmitters), users (receivers), governmental approvals, and other areas.

That is a really fun idea, but it would require a lot of power in a low-power situation.

Let's hope the price of plutonium power sources (http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428751/nuclear-generator-powers-curiosity-mars-mission/) comes down.  Otherwise, solar power is most likely.

If there is no one to compete with the satellites, the difficulty would get adjusted to fit their processing power after a few space-born blocks.

new and "cheap" rockets for sattelites (from the teslar founder)

http://www.spacex.com/falcon9

Yep.  The general idea is that you group your own cubesat together with dozens of others, on the same flight, sharing costs.  SpaceX helps push those costs down even lower.

stqism in #bitcoin-otc has been talking about working on a satellite...

CoinDesk covers: http://www.coindesk.com/core-developer-bitcoin-node-space/

Extremely cool project, I'll certainly be watching this.

found a photo of jeff in 10 years  :D :

https://i.imgur.com/upTsvz9.gif

Jeff: I love this idea and I'd like to contribute.  Would you consider a Kickstarter-like model and declare a fundraising goal and deadline, and if we don't make the goal then the donations are returned?  I'd like to make more than a token pledge, but I don't want the money just sitting around if this project doesn't find its legs.

Jeff, awesome idea!! It's bald, near impossible but with Bitcoin the sky is the limit. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help!

Well, if we are going to space, the sky isn't the limit anymore :P

Yea at the moment its the moon, or the solar-system if you want :)

Same answer as with the investment question early in this thread.  KickStarter is too much work at this stage.  KickStarter also potentially introduces problems with setting expectations.  Phase 1 -- the boring design work -- does not cost very much, and would not be worth a KickStarter.  KickStarter for Phase 2 -- building and launching space hardware -- is very exciting, but it is premature to KickStart that right now, in my opinion.

Phase 1 is all about designing a usable foundation.  If you can afford it, donate 1-10 BTC, and email me so that I may credit your sponsorship.

The current team will be kept small, under 4 engineers or so.

Layers of management, investors, incorporations, and KickStarters are just not necessary this early, and would simply slow down the process.

Erm guys, you are talking about a rocket trip being commissioned and bought with Bitcoins.

Do you realize how insanely awesome super awesome amazing that would be????

:)

Satoshi, get those bitcoins out of cold storage! Now!

Thanks for the reply Jeff.  I now agree with your logic.  The KickStarter format should wait for the build/launch phase. 

Donated from my vanity address.  I bought ~10 bitcoins in 2011 to support what I see as a promising open source project, and have been trickling them out since then to help the bitcoin economy.

But this helps the bitcoin project much more directly than me buying another pair of shoes!

Inspirational work, Jeff!

This really is epic, What would it cost if Mining groups, etc. Or even a home user, wanted a two way device to send and receive from the sat?
If you were able to give many user's the ability to send data, we would never be worried about it going down.

I'm centered in Canada with 5 acres of land, and clear skyline, would love to have a transmission station here, along with a generator, and it could survive the zombie's ;). Make a way for my phone's wallet to communicate and it's even better.

But would the Sat be limited on how many input's it could take? Come to think of it, I doubt all the user's could upload, they would overload it?


Excited, Wish I had more money to submit. But I'm here for moral support!

Sadly, satellite bandwidth is really limited.  Also, if this is to be any sort of fallback mechanism, the ability to transmit to the satellite must be limited and trusted.  Otherwise people will just DDoS the satellite right along with DDoS'ing the mesh network.

The ability to receive from the satellite, on the other hand, should be free for the whole world.

P.S.  Thanks to Rusty and Erik Voorhees for their support!

You guys should hold the 30 bitcoins till they are worth 3 million to cover all costs :D
Best of luck with this project , it seems like a nice project , but I do not have any Bitcoins to contribute :(

If people wanted to DoS it, wouldn't it be easier to just send static on the frequencies involved?

If the satellite(s) are not in geostationary orbits it would not allow one party or group to disable its entire operation--just for a given region, unless they had transmitters around the world. Of course, such a system would give a good period of downtime per region. Only one satellite cannot cover the entire Earth at a time, and if the satellite is the only communication method the "trickle of data" would be lost leading to potential blockchain splits.

Thanks to Roger Ver / Bitcoinstore for another generous donation.

Great idea! I added this project to coingiving.com (http://coingiving.com/projects/222-bitcoins-in-space). Donors will automatically be listed as sponsors there (even if they donate less than 1 btc). Hope Jeff doesn't object to such a shameless plug and smaller donations.

Interesting project, make it happen  ;D

I really like the idea of BTC in Space so what exactly would it benefit Humans on Earth with? I assume it is for protection against governments and any malevolent structures trying to close the Internet correct? What other services would it provide as I am very curious about the project and really admire these innovative ideas. :)

More coverage: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/12/bitcoin_space/

I brought up bitcoin RF systems all week in technical development, and satellites came up in two posts.  I'd love to support this project.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=370457.0

More coverage: http://gizmodo.com/crazy-hacker-wants-to-save-bitcoin-by-blasting-a-cubesa-1487464486#

this is a really great idea.

eventually this would allow for connections to robotic satellites in space to build and manage data centers, and so on...

As an aside one can see in this diagram of Cloud City that mining is integrated into the purpose of the city.

http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081001130822/starwars/images/b/b1/CloudCity_egvv.jpg

www.redstarmining.com - is currently holding a motion on making a BTC1.00 donation.  As founder of the cooperative I hope it passes.

Jeff, I'm a physics and analog electronics expert.  I am a scientist by profession and work specifically on NMR, which amounts to wireless detection of small signals.  I do lots of RF design.

Tell me what you need done and I'll get to work - I have done some work on this concept already myself and did so without knowledge of your project.  PM and I'm listening.

I would like to announce along with our second birthday celebration that the motion passed  ;D

Not sure if anyone brought this up, a satellite orbits earth about every 90 minutes, meaning we'd get connection for about 30 minutes when it's around and then silence 60 minutes. But likely there's some option to rent something "cheap", low bandwidth on a global level.

A satellite orbits earth however often you want it to.

There are also geosynchronous satellites.

This is not entirely correct since at the shorter orbital periods you will encounter an increasingly thicker atmosphere as altitude decreases. Typical Low Earth Orbit (LEO) period is ~90 mins.

Doesn't really matter what time it is, the point remains that with a single piece of HW you won't reasonably cover all you need to cover in a reliable way.

Also, how about the receiving parts on land? How much would one cost to buy?

And lastly, is it really useful to have one-way communication? The amount of transaction data is quite low, it might be beneficial to do a two-way possibility to get Bitcoin anywhere, even without internet or electricity (solar).

Did you watch Gravity too  :P

...haven't seen it, actually in another life I'm actually a rocket scientist :)

Beginning with "not sure if anyone brought this up..." this entire thread needs to die.  That original comment makes too many errors to address so just end it.  This doesn't present a technical problem for signal transmission.

Wow this sounds like a great idea!
-AM

Hi everyone. I was in touch with Jeff earlier about this idea, which is similar to something that I'm working on. Everyone who is interested in broadcast data from space should join forces.

http://outernet.is (http://outernet.is)

WiFi for the world from outer space. Unrestricted, globally accessible, broadcast data.

Something's brewing: http://www.dunveganspace.com/goals/bitsat

Should have something available late tonight or early tomorrow.

Hey Jeff: Glad to see BitSat maintaining the momentum. Let know if you'd like contact information regarding transponder pricing on an existing geostationary satellite. The cost of a 64kbit circuit on C-band over three transponders is not only incredibly affordable (when compared with building and launching a small satellite constellation) it also provides a global broadcast almost immediately. SES and Intelsat are comparably priced.

Ku-band pricing is more or less the same per MHz, but it requires 12-transponders, rather than the three on C-band.

Based on your stated plans, I'm wondering what is the goal of this project exactly?  One satellite doesn't cover the whole world very well.  Is it just local coverage?  US only?  Not related to BitPay, though?

Let's take a guess...


This sounds high...


http://www.satmagazine.com/story.php?number=602922274

This is an older article, but even considering a 2.5x increase in the price of oil and quite a bit of inflation, launch costs for a 3 cube satellite really shouldn't be more than $0.5 mil today.

And if we look here (http://spaceflightservices.com/pricing-plans/), for instance, we see that a 3u cubesat launched to LEO costs $325k.  But, a geosynchronous orbit costs $1 million.

So... what's the plan?  Where is this thing going to broadcast?

If it has anything to do with Cubesats, I would like to be a part of it. I have some experience with AGI's STK and my masters thesis has to do with Cubesat science instrumentation.  

One thing that you may look at (for launch) is Nasa's ELANA deal ( part of cubesat initiative). If you can go through a university, things would be a lot cheaper.

Yes, you can definitely make this a university or ELANA, but then you will have no control over the timeframe. One of the PhoneSats that Ames launched was sitting on a shelf for 18 months, literally.

I don't know much about Jeff's plans, but he and I are working on similar projects. Geostationary orbit is going to be way too far away--free space loss will be huge. Even at the higher transmit powers allowed under Part 97/amateur radio satellite rules, a signal will be tough to pickup by a consumer-grade ground station/dish.

The way to get immediate (as in next month) global coverage of transaction broadcasts is by using currently operational GSO satellites.

It would cost about $60,000 a year to have an unencrypted global broadcast at 64kbps.

Aye! that is true

Another thing about Cubesats in geostationary  orbit is power requirements on the satellite itself . At LEO say at 350-400 km on a 1U cubesat, you will get about 2W max power from body mounted solar panels. Now I am not sure how that will scale up when you go in higher orbit,  but for transmission from that altitude  power requirements would be significantly higher.  Someone needs to look into it. How big of a satellite you are planning on launching anyway? it might be hard to fit everything in 1U. Deployable solar panels may be the answer here. But that brings you to sizes larger than 1 U.

Moreover isn't there strict guidelines you have to follow at geostationary spots? cubesats have strict regulation to keep debris hazards in check even when you launch in LEO. Explosive bolts, for example is forbidden. I would imagine there would be stricter restrictions for geostationary orbit.

Edit: @ Syed, It seems you are an UIUC alum (from the outernet.is website). You know about the LAICE project?

Oh, I'm not talking about cubesats in geostationary orbit--I'm referring to transponder leases on Intelsat and SES satellites. But you're right, orbital slots are tightly controlled. I believe all nations have a slot, which is why you see some satellites flying under the flag of Isle of Man or Bermuda.

You can put deployable solar panels on a 1U. Check out the Ecuadoran Pegasus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEE-01_Pegaso

There are many things to keep in mind regarding risk and orbital debris mitigation, but it's a pretty standard punch list. As long as the satellites naturally de-orbits in less than 25 years, all is good. A cubesat at less than 600km only has a 5-7 year mission duration before orbital degradation causes it to burn up on re-entry.

I was not aware with LAICE--thanks for the tip. But it's a 6U, which is considerably more expensive to launch. Still a very interesting project.

Awesome Project Jeff !
Chubacca approves this ! Gr Gr.  . !

Big project update:

Project update #1 (PDF): http://www.dunveganspace.com/goals/bitsat/BitSatUpdate1.pdf

The beginnings of the technical specifications needed for satellite uplink and downlink,
BitSat architecture, v0.1 (PDF): http://www.dunveganspace.com/goals/bitsat/BitSatArchitecture-0.1.pdf

Files posted on http://www.dunveganspace.com/goals/bitsat

hi
the geo one costs is only the sat or launch included?

ok it s only the launch cost

how about the sat itself?

i had a project for providing cheap internet access to poor countries using this type of sat ....but costs for geostationnary sat is too high to make is possible

Correct, geostationary tends to be considerably more expensive.

Is this project working with - https://www.outernet.is/ - who aim to broadcast the blockchain from space.

What you are intending is not in goodwill of the amateur radio service.

There is a flood of cubesat´s the last years, most of them using frequencys of the amateur radio service, while not providing good services to radio amateurs. This is due that the hardware available is usable on the amateur radio service frequencys.

But none of those is providing something what is of use for the amateur radio service, like transponders, pictures from orbit etc. And also even most of them do not provide all data to decode by amateur radio operators. The amateur radio community should be included in every satellite project, which is not the case with most of the cubesats, while using our frequencys.

Also see:
http://www.klofas.com/papers/klofas_upcoming_cubesat_launches.pdf
http://www.spacenews.com/article/opinion/37890editorial-cubesats-need-coordination-too

I do not think of that a satellite like "BitSat" is of use.
But if done on other frequencys ok.

Hey Jeff,

Dan at Blockchain/ZeroBlock here.  We would like to be involved with this project.  Please e-mail me at dan@blockchain.info.

Best,

Dan

Good luck with this project, Bitcoin wil survive even if all humans on Earth are gone.
I've sent small donation, hope it will help. I've never thought that I'll participate in actual space program  :)

Ceremonial moon landing anyone? Eh? Eh?

Exciting new news coming mid-April.

The news is out!  http://www.prlog.org/12313639-bitcoins-in-space-one-step-closer.html

As you can see from watching the donation address on blockchain.info, we have already made the first $16k contract payment (as well as a 1 BTC payment to Corgan Labs).

Expect an extensive project update in the next day or two.

Very cool! Congratulations on this project.

I will donate after the update

Thanks for keeping us updated.
For the people that think that this is fake please post some photos related to this satelites or the company that is going to launch them.

I can't believe I'm just learning about taking bitcoins to space. I'm an aerospace engineering student and will definitely be following this. Is the best place to learn how I can contribute here and the Google group? It's precisely this kind of thing that I want to do as an engineer.

The whole project is absolutely amazing! With fullnodes in space bitcoin could become more fail-safe than the internet today.

Of course that goal is not an easy one.


ya.ya.yo!

The BitSat project would like to thank Mohit Kalra for a 2 BTC donation, plus discussions of additional funding.  Mohit is a bitcoin enthusiast and angel investor.  Mohit currently runs a Zip Fastener Manufacturing Unit in New Delhi , India, and also a medium sized Data Centre.  Mohit has been investing in Bitcoin Businesses for over a year now.

The BitSat project would also like to thank an unknown party for donating 1 BTC.

Project update #2 coming very soon.

What type of device will be needed to "listen" the BitSat broadcast?
I mean, normal computers/smartphones would be able to recieve BitSat blocks and transactions?

You will need some sort of satellite receiver.  The exact specifications are being hammered out right now.

At worst, you will need some sort of dish + equipment.  At best, you will need a simple radio attached via USB dongle.

Read the system specification PDFs on http://www.dunveganspace.com/goals/bitsat

Can't wait for the final specs. of the sat and station .
Glad , i could be part of it .

It will turn out to be a very amazing public initiative .
I can imagine a lot of these BitSats in a few years , already .

This project has a potential to eliminate the only barrier , which can disturb Bitcoin in future , i.e- Network Providers .

Is the bird going to run a full node, or SPV? :-)

This will be interesting, from the software side.  Pushing updates to space...well I'm sure its done but I guess I've only never thought of it...

It has taken a bit longer to put together the project update, but many things are happening behind the scenes.

We continue to have regular design meetings with Deep Space Industries (http://deepspaceindustries.com), designing the cubesat spacecraft and constellation.

Big update coming at the Bitcoin in the Beltway (http://www.bitcoinbeltway.com) conference on Sunday.

So lets see.  Soon I'll be able to book and pay for a space flight with Virgin and I can stop off and top-up my bitcoin debit card en-route to terra-formed living environment on the moon?!

Where do I signup?!

*just checked out Bitcoin in the Beltway, $400 at door if available.  Bit out of my league atm but looks cool.  Hope the announcement is posted on youtube somewhere :)

sent some btc 3 days ago. TOoo DAaaaaaa MOOOOONNNN!!!

Never heard about a project like this one.
might be awesome but really hard to get.
thanks for keeping us up and good luck with that!

WAH WAH WAH
so... this' the plan to prevent the extinction of btc... great!!!

should be able to run NXT on there as it takes much less resources....

I think it'd be worthwhile making the satellite ground station also being HF tranceiver nodes using Q15X25 modulation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q15X25 - or similar.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/31/nasa-validates-impossible-space-drive


Might want to hold off on the final design for a couple of years.

Just held an 8-hour Preliminary Design Review (PDR) with Deep Space Industries, covering all major subsystems, ground station details, power/link/etc. budgets.

Lots going on behind the scenes, as this contract with Deep Space Industries proceeds.

Very cool! Thanks for keeping us updated

Great work Jeff.

Cool!really cool .  ;D awesome

This is a really crazy... awesome... intriguing idea. Every thing interesting and everything that bitcoin is. Kudos for the project, great idea.

I just wanted to give a quick update regarding our own data broadcasting project. We are currently operational and are broadcasting across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Although small satellites do have their use case for telecommunications, from the perspective of getting a broadcast up and running and delivering a fast stream, you just can't beat geostationary satellites. Here's a quick overview of the system:

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-g-outernet-explained-20140808-htmlstory.html

https://www.outernet.is/pages/how-to

Right now we are broadcasting Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg eBooks. Bitcoin blockchain information is in the pipeline; it's just a matter of increasing the bandwidth on the satellite. Does anyone have any suggestions on what kind of data rate would be useful for this kind of broadcast ticker?

Currently stuck in ITAR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations) queue, waiting for US State Dept. to clear things which non-US people already known about and have access to...

What kind of data rates are you hoping to achieve with your cubesat? I think small satellites definitely have their place, but we are currently running a broadcast data service over all of North America, Europe, and MENA and have a minimum continuously bitrate of 56 kbps. We'll soon have access to a 50 Mbps channel and will be fully global. It's tough to get those kinds of numbers with small satellites, mostly due to power and heat issues.

Of course, we need a lot more bandwidth because we are a general platform for broadcast data; bitcoin blockchain broadcasting will only be a small slice of the overall data carousel.

youtube.com/watch?v=jNx3vDSuzkY (http://youtube.com/watch?v=jNx3vDSuzkY)

Kryptoradio (http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoiners-finland-send-cryptocurrency-radio) are broadcasting blockchain data in a 7.5kbps channel on the UHF band using the DVB-T1(or possibly)T2 codec in Finland.  Using the Digital Radio Mondiale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale) codec you could broadcast =>7.1kbps over a 5kHz channel on SW/MW/LW.  Although renting SW transmitter broadcast time costs around $25k (http://www.wwrb.org/ptime.php) per month for 24/7/365 broadcasts.  5kHZ though is about a quarter of the bandwidth that current AM radio broadcast stations use on MW or LW.

Another idea to look at terrestrial broadcasts although this time with full duplex is UHF IEEE 802.11ah (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah) meshnetworks.  With a good external antenna you could get very good local range at 900Mhz so it could really work well for mesh-networking.  The first IEEE 802.11ah chips are supposed to come out next year while the protocol should be finalised by 2016.  Plus it's an unlicensed band so no one would need a ham license to set up a low power node.

lets first settle bitcoin on earth...

In case the goverment goes nuts about Bitcoin and decides to shut down the entire internet, satilletes launched by fat Bitcoin whales could be what saves the day.

An ad in USA Today's NASA special edition: http://imgur.com/RMdY7EM

- Open Source Space

- Space-as-a-Service (SaaS)

- Wire the solar system for networking

- Data centers on Luna and Mars

luv it!  :D

Also some of these ideas are worth discussing as they have implications for significantly changing the computational resources required for a fully-validating bitcoin node ... and thus h/ware requirements for the BitSat cubes most likely.

https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/10/a-scalability-roadmap/ (https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/10/a-scalability-roadmap/)

Particularly, whether the BitSat would carry the full blockchain or hashed UTXO with a confirmed depth only?

As revealed at June's Bitcoin Beltway conference, the BitSat satellites will carry the full blockchain, and fully validate every block sent to it.

This is in contrast with other systems that simply broadcast a datastream without validation, and therefore require much higher levels of trust than with BitSat.

Is it going to be bootstrapped as high as possible before launch, or will it have to download the entire blockchain while in orbit? LOL

heh, definitely loading the chain prior to launch.  That's part of the pre-flight tests in fact.

Could someone post info about the required equipment to recieve the BitSat broadcast in a average laptop?

If possible post links to amazon for the equipment.

Of course! Right?

I mean, the day before launch, copy over all the blocks*.dat and other files needed. Then turn it on while it's still here, keeping it running as long as possible until right before launching to sync up the last possible minute.

Then when it's in space, uh, ... well, I don't know how it works, but I guess it's already turned on while it's flying there.

How many satellites will there be? From the ad, it seems there will be 18 to 24 cubesats? Each one connected to a ground station or each other?

I made this picture in Paint.

https://i.imgur.com/lxort8J.png

Let me know if I understand this or not. The lines are supposed to be, well, line of sight communication between ground stations and each other.

With space, you get much higher latencies than on the ground.

To get full coverage over populated areas of Earth, one requires multiple orbital planes, resulting in something like this:

http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/constellation.jpg

New desktop wallpaper!

sweet ... got a view that shows southern hemisphere ground stations (e.g. australasian)?

How many satellites depends on funding:

• 4 - a demo, with coverage gaps, high latencies
• 16 - adequate, with some periods/areas of high latency
• 24 - ideal target
• 32 - super duper :)

The satellites can communicate with each other (P2P!).  There will be multiple ground stations in multiple countries around the world.


That's all I can release for the moment.  Every landmass except Antarctica should have full coverage.

I'd like an interactive screen saver... click on a satellite and watch it go round and round.


That's the answer I was hoping for. So if the entire planet goes dark, the blockchain is swirling around us and continuing to exist. (mining would be a different issue)

FAQs:  How long does a cubesat stay up there?  How long is a single cubesat reachable during an orbit?

With COTS parts, operational life is predicted at 2-3 years, possibly years longer.

http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/bitsat-deorbit-vis.png

The three links in the OP are not working for me?

Fixed.  Thanks for pointing that out.

Some things got moved to BitSat.org.

Ireland's RTE Long Wave radio station on 252kHz is to close down this January (http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/1015/652492-rte-longwave/).  That's 18kHz of bandwidth that could cover all of the British Isles and reach all it's 68Million people from a single transmitter.  Plus I'd imagine that Northern France and maybe the low countries could also receive the transmission.  The blockchain plus a Digital Radio Mondiale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale) coded audio station could be broadcast with the 18kHz of bandwidth using the Digital Radio Mondiale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale) codec.  Or more data like alternative blockchains could potentially be transmitted instead.  LW transmissions have good penetration into large buildings.  So an external antenna on the outside of the building would not be needed.

so how much btc is needed 2 do it?

Yes.  Ideally blockchain data, plus other useful data, can be transmitted if bandwidth is available.  For example, the next probable goal for transmission would be live bitcoin transaction data.  This enables mining (assuming you have an uplink somewhere), by delivering a "full feed" of bitcoin protocol data.

After blocks + TXs, there are plenty of other useful things one can imagine.

With the full 18kHz of bandwidth at 252kHz LW it looks like you could potentially transmit up to ~25kbps (Mode D) to ~60kbps (Mode A) using the Digital Radio Mondiale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale) codec.  So almost 11MB could be transmitted per hour in Mode D.  Or about 1.8GB per week in Mode D.  Which is about 94GB per year in mode D.

Imagine that they are already a couple of BitSats up there, how the average Joe uses them?

Joe has modern a android device (i.e. nexus 5) and a average laptop.

A satellite receiver.

The project specification indicates that the receiver should be made with Common, Off The Shelf (COTS) parts, and may be purchased or built by a skilled hobbyist.

KnCminer blog post: https://www.knccloud.com/blog/archive#he-s-going-to-beam-bitcoin-from-space

What about a system where the Block chain is carved up and stored on people's PCs in smaller chunks, actually, they are probably working on this already, a bit like i2p

https://geti2p.net/en/

Are there any basic specs for the satellites up anywhere ... just would like to know some basics, dimensions, weight?

Some new press on the WSJ MONEYBEAT blog BitBeat: Bitcoin Coder Garzik Signs Deal to Deploy ‘BitSats’ In Space (http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/03/12/bitbeat-bitcoin-coder-garzik-signs-deal-to-deploy-bitsats-in-space/)

More than just basic...

Check out DunveganSpace.com (http://dunveganspace.com) for one-page info sheet + 93-page design specification.

cool, thanks.

ps: Lagrange, as in "Lagrange points", is one word, named after Joseph Louis Lagrange mathematician/dynamicist who discovered those points.

What about experts from universits ? Maybe they can help with it too, but I am not sure about that investors, can kickstart help us ?

i love Satcubes. they're so freaking Cute!

You may know issues on mining, according to your one paper, these satellites generate 18.5 W of electricity, also cooling is a big issue without water & air outside the atmosphere.

Whatever the benefit beside geekness will be, looks like only proof of stake can run fully independent in space.

from http://dunveganspace.com/assets/bitsat-design-pdr.pdf, page 15:


would it have been possible (or desirable) to design the sats in such a way that anybody would've been able to connect to one of them and send it a block?

Any updates on this recently?

same here. any updates?

Any updates?Or was it a scam? ;)
Why don't you contact this person:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1183158.0