What’s software that would benefit from running in space? The only thing I can imagine is processing of data generated in space so you need less downlink or can reduce latency, everything else can be calculated wherever you want, no?

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ikiris a day ago | parent | next [-]

I think the point the original guy is hand wavingly getting at is the point of something like this is to avoid the possibility of say a FBI raid or Nuremburgish trials for a vast AI surveillance processing facility hub for other down looking satellites if they were to lose their newly acquired power, or similar technocratic ramblings / ideas like it would survive the end of society.

Its like that scene at the end of Real Genius, "Maybe somebody already has a use for it, one for which it's perfectly designed." Lets look at the facts: Impossible to raid, not under any direct legal jurisdiction, high bandwidth line of sight communications options to satellite feed points that would be difficult to tap outside of other orbital actors, Power feed that is untethered to any planetary grid or at risk of terrestrial actors, etc.

	▲	echoangle a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That’s not how it works. Your state is responsible for your activities in space, so if you annoy other countries enough, your own country will regulate you. If they don’t, you could have just built the same thing on the ground in this country.
	▲	fch42 18 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Impossible to raid ? It's definitely much easier and much much cheaper to send a single rocket there blowing the assembled rather large target into still sizeable chucks of orbital debris than it is to deploy and assemble the thing there in the first place. And there are a few terrestrial actors rather capable of this. More than there are who could make it happen under whatever optimistic assumptions anyway. In itself, a structure of this size in orbit is an efficient catcher of micrometeorites and orbital debris. Over "non-eternal" timeframes you don't even need a bad actor with good rockets. Nevermind that in such a case, the eventual fate of these sizeable chunks of orbital debris is to become rods of god ... just without particular steerability. It'd be a sight.

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d_silin a day ago | parent | prev [-]

...you have to pay me a lot for the answer to this question.