Re:Edited Edupage, 18 Aug 1996

[mccoy@communities.com (Jim McCoy)]

"E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU> writes:
>         Speaking of Net-in-Orbit (while distributed datahavens have their
> points, sometimes you'd prefer not to have a given chunk of data on your
> hard drive - even encrypted with a passphrase), what's the physical setup
> for rewriteable optical drives? Are there any methods of doing those that
> will work OK in orbit?

You want to avoid moving parts like the plague in orbit.  They eventually
wear out or fail and once that happens you have a very expensive piece of
junk in orbit.  Solid-state storage is the _only_ way to go if you want to
avoid things like neding to pressurize the drive (eliminating any cost
advantage over solid-state.)  Its not like you can go up to swap a dead drive
out you know...

The big problem with orbiting datahavens is the cost.  Access requires going
to a commercial launching agency (approx $100K cost to put a smallsat in
LEO.)  The smallsat itself is relatively cheap at $25K.  Then multiply that
by 30 because with LEO (you will not get a GEO slot, ever) you will need a
swarm of sats to provide constant coverage; the orbit the sats are in means
that they are only overhead for minutes at a time.  When you add all of this
up it begins to make the idea of buying an old tanker or fish processing boat
pretty cost effective.
The big problem is that no one has data that is worth protecting enough to
make such a venture pay off.

jim