- a microSD card weighs somewhere around 0.4g
- the highest capacity microSD that's easily available is 256GB
- a trebuchet can throw a 90kg projectile over 300m
90kg worth of microSD cards is 225,000 of them
Therefore a trebuchet can throw 57.6PB of data over 300m
This would have the highest throughput of any telecommunications network ever created
@troubleMoney @uschebit Not calculating it through, but I think a train full of microSD cards would have a higher throughput over 300m, once it did accelerate to full speed. On a trebuchet, we'd have to calculate with ground speed, which is lower than trajectory speed.
Even higher throughput would be bringing a maximum payload of microSD cards into low earth orbit. That would move at around 7km/s.
@anathem @troubleMoney
Sure, there are lots of ways to speed up the old "station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway". But everything involving a trebuchet gets automatic bonus points ;)
I like your low earth orbit suggestion! What's the "maximum payload", though? You can always fit in just one more tiny microSD card, can't you?
@anathem @troubleMoney Just for completeness: https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/. *Of course* there's an xkcd on it...
@uschebit @troubleMoney Best info I could find on maximum payload to low earth orbit was 140 metric tons using the Saturn V. Size considerations aside, that'd be ~83 PB at 7km/s...
@anathem @uschebit @troubleMoney does it have to be a single launch? because if not, the question becomes "what's the volume of all feasible low Earth orbits?", which is interesting too
@T045T @anathem @troubleMoney Let's call it the "high cloud".
@uschebit @anathem @troubleMoney how about a "ring buffer"? :>
@anathem
In the '50s/'60s there were experiments to do mail-by-rocket. This just brings the experiments bang up to date (with the emphasis on the "bang")!
@troubleMoney @uschebit
@dheadshot
And now I'm curious: How did you stumble upon that ol' thread? :D
@troubleMoney @uschebit
@anathem
Eugen boosted the original post and, while I'd seen it before, I decided to read through some of the comments.
@troubleMoney @uschebit