FTL comms; $2.6 quadrillion/GW solar (was The village people vs. Stewart Brand)

Good grief, hitman, pick, pick pick. What do you bet that somebody comes up with some way around the time lag problem, maybe localized nodes or something, I dont know...its the future after all. And if we havent come up with a way to increase yield of solar cells by then somethings wrong. But despite solar, if we had to weve got plenty of real estate to set up a FISSION reactor if theres no other option, which there will be, of course. Pretty iffy accountin thar meester.

From: hitssquad
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 8:07 PM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [spacesettlers] FTL comms; $2.6 quadrillion/GW solar (was The village people vs. Stewart Brand)

--- In mailto:spacesettlers%40yahoogroups.com, "Victor Smith" wrote:
> I was positing an optimal size for a self contained, highly technological habitat with full access to instantaneous communication and hookups (probably neural by then) to whatever interplaNET happens to be in vogue at the time.

Faster-than-light communications? Jupiter and its moons range from about 35 to 52 light-minutes from Earth. The round-trip delay would range from an hour and 10 minutes, to an hour and 44 minutes. Jovians would need some way of paying for their internet access, and paying for the useful information they derived from that access (which would be low-bandwidth and extra-expensive because of the distance and lack of market-scale). Physical trade would be hampered by the distance, exampled by the 6 years it took the Galileo spacecraft to reach Jupiter orbit insertion -- *after* waiting for a launch window.

> as much power as needed straight from the sun

The solar flux at Jupiter averages about 1/27th the average at Earth, and falls to about 1/30th the average at Earth at its orbital aphelion of 5.458104 AU. Solar ore mining rigs there have to be relatively large to compensate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)#Solar_panels

"
Each panel or array is 2.7 meters (8.9 ft), by 8.9 meters (29 ft) long,[23] the biggest on any NASA deep-space probe.[24] One of the panels is slightly narrower than the others; this is to facilitate their stowage for launch. These smaller panels are 2.091 meters (6.86 ft) wide. The total area of the arrays is 60 square meters (650 sq ft). If the arrays were optimized to operate at Earth, they would produce 12 to 14 kilowatts of power. Only 486 W will be generated when Juno arrives at Jupiter, declining to 420 W as radiation degrades the cells.
"

"
As of June 2011, the mission was projected to cost $1.1 billion over its life.
"

That works out to $2.6 quadrillion per gigawatt.