Let’s launch hard drives back and forth between earth and LEO. Like sneakernet in space.

GolfPopper a day ago | parent | next [-]

U.S. spy satellites were returning film payloads to Earth as late as 1986:

	▲	a4isms a day ago \| parent [-]
		That was the McGuffin for the 1963 book "Ice Station Zebra" (and the 1968 film adaptation). A satellite with pictures of every missile launch site in the US malfunctions and is knocked off its planned orbit that would overfly the Soviet Union, so the race is on to figure out where they would drop the film and prevent them from recovering it. The story was based on a real-life incident in 1959: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discoverer_2

chris_va a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes reentering the atmosphere

	▲	saltcured a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The hard part is getting an IO card with built-in hardware decelerator
	▲	ErroneousBosh a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I have just decommed an old datacentre that we're moving out of and this is basically what my 30-year-old travel-worn farm truck Range Rover looks like right now.

pixl97 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Been there, done that.

They'd drop their film back down to earth.

someonebaggy a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If they're heavy enough, it doubles as a space fountain.

ck2 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

railgun microSD

but seriously, the first spy satellites used to drop film rolls and they had a crazy way for the military to track and catch them via planes

	▲	jasomill 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What's crazier is that there was a similar system to retrieve people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery...

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