0 sats \ 6 replies \ @elvismercury 4 Sep 2023 \ on: Removing the last few middleman tech
I think this is an important attitude -- I love the balloon idea, excited to hear what you're up to! There was some work by Sabo and Elaine Ou on using ham radio (here's a writeup) that I liked; as well as relay version using these walkie-talkie things (can't remember what that one was called.) Would love to see a rich web of alternate network / transmission methods.
I think of this in the same way as the current drivechain discussion -- so much better to have some of these ideas well thought-out and developed before they're needed because of some catastrophe. Just having them in place and ready to go as credible alternatives to the default internet transmission may be enough to prevent the attacks in the first place, since it will seem pointless to bother.
We work very closely with the HAM community in central texas and around the USA. We are using commercial / ISM bands, but all of the ideas/research/hardware trials the HAM folks do, we closely collaborate on. :)
Yes, we need these systems thought out, tested, in process before a crisis.
The balloon platform is payload agnostic, it will also carry US Government payloads for forest fire monitoring, ground water analysis and dozens of other use cases currently served by satellites.
Internet access is probably 5% to 10% of the addressable market.
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Over the past 10 years or so I’ve worked with hams here in Texas and we’ve been flying various float/ascent (float stays in roughly same altitude and goes in more of an “orbit”, ascent shoots up and bursts ~100k feet). We’ve developed things like geofencing (to shutdown when we can’t legally transmit) lots of small/minimal solar cells etc.
I hope to build a standard “kit” that folks can buy and attach a payload to , as our first saleable product.
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This is really cool. Seems like a thing that people would buy for a collective benefit for the general good of btc (e.g., to help make the network resilient) vs as a product they use to earn money. Is that how you're thinking of it, or do you imagine actual use-demand?
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Are you referring to the balloon kit ? Or the CDN/DNS?
Both of those have wide use cases and direct demand. BTC is one of hundreds of protocols and software platforms that can use it .
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Was thinking of the balloon -- not obvious to me who would want that besides (in theory) bitcoiners, or blockchains hell-bent on preventing chain splits and the like. Would be interested in pointers / documents / whatever to learn more.
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Well, think of the balloon as a replacement for a satellite. Think of all the things satellites do, and what the world would look like if the same functionality could be delivered 100-1000x cheaper and could be landed / take off again.
The balloon is payload agnostic. Sensing, surveillance, internet are payloads we are in talks with potential customers for today. HFT is another area.
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