The problem of light time delay if we set up a station on another planet.

Does this mean, assuming we ever get to, say Mars, that because of the delay
factor, a local internet is all one can use? I mean, I know they call it
the World Wide Wait, but the delay of two way light time would be
ridiculous.

I bet Google are already building the software.

Still, maybe we can use Quantum entanglement to make it instant. grin.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
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"Brian Gaff" writes:

Still, maybe we can use Quantum entanglement to make it instant. grin.

And call it sub-space radio?


Frankly, any would-be Martians are going to be on their own as comm.
delays go from interminable to monstrous, depending on orbital
positioning.

From the link (no endorsement, informational only):

http://www.marsinstitute.info/epo/marsfacts.html

We get "Distance from Earth":

Min: 56e6 km
Max: 399e6 km

Based on that and speed of light approx at: 300,000 km/s (or
you can use the more exact figure of 299,732.458 km/s if you prefer)
we get best case round-trip delay of*:

Min: (56e6 x 2) / 300,000 = 373.3 seconds or 6.2 minutes
Max: (399e6 x 2) / 300,000 = 2660 seconds or 44.33 minutes

FYI, right now we're closer to the min than the max....

The only sci-fi movie that got this right was 2001 and it did so in
a 'round-about' fashion in the scene with the crew interview about HAL,
where they talk about 'transmission delay was edited out of this recording'.
The fact that an interview was even attempted in this fashion indicates
it occurred while Discovery was still fairly close to Earth. Otherwise
best to just send the questions up and wait for them to come back in a
broadcast, as transmissions between Discovery and 'Mission Control' (yeah
sure, whatever...) are described in the book.

Dave

*Must be my day to be doing these calcs...

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s...ce8f9071dc406a

:-)