Quote from: BostonRedsocks on May 03, 2017, 09:10:47 PM

Quote from: shveicar on May 03, 2017, 07:41:09 PM

You want to say that each satellite they launch will contain on board a mini PC with a NEXUS wallet and a certain number of coins to support the node?

No, you use satellites for communication, not for wallet storage. Your PC/phone currently send and receive block transactions only from the Internet where nodes continually agree by consensus on the blocklist state. A satellite communication channel would be the new way to communicate with nodes that does NOT route through the Internet. The satellite itself could indeed be a node, but it would also work as a mere communication channel between Earth based nodes. Making the satellite a node would require more work, since indeed it basically needs to be a PC powerful enough to hash-check transactions and such. Not sure if the significant added complexity and wattage of that would offset the communication savings.

Yes, small sats like these have lifetimes measured in years, maybe not even 10 years. That's why you launch hundreds (or thousands?) at once, and then periodically to keep them "in stock".

These are (some of the) reasons Nexus may benefit from microsatellites, leaving out the obvious one of providing connectivity where infrastructure is poor, and, with connectivity, communication and digital currency exchange. But the reverse direction is just as interesting. I think it might be more interesting, in the longer term.

In addition to satellite launch capability, Vector is developing a software-defined satellite platform called Galactic Sky: http://www.intelligent-aerospace.com/articles/2016/08/vector-space-launches-galactic-sky-software-platform-and-satellite-design-division-to-provide-access-to-satellites-space-data.html

Just like using earth-based cloud computing, Galactic Sky aims to let people rent (short-term or long-term) part of the capability of a microsatellite, be it for communication, imaging, secure storage, or a combination. This would be a transformative thing: Today, doing just about anything on a satellite costs millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. Imagine a smart imaging analytics startup being able to rent the compute capability of one microsatellite for one trip around the earth. Today, they would need to pay tens of thousands (or more) of dollars to pay an imagery company for a full data dump. With a software-defined satellite platform, they could perform their analysis local to the camera, never having to downlink the data back to earth, except the pictures deemed most important.

and when you have a virtualized platform like this, you need a way to pay for it. You could set up a huge payments infrastructure like Amazon does, but Jim Cantrell seems to have a pretty strong libertarian streak to him (to say the least), and I bet the idea of being able to use a completely decentralized, verifiable electronic currency platform to manage the resource rental must be very attractive. If nothing else, you don't lose 3%+ to the credit card companies, and at best, you enable a huge global audience to gain access to your platform with very low overhead.

The Nexus-Vector partnership is a long game. An interesting one, but also one that calls for patience. Real rockets, the kind we saw successfully launch today, don't get built overnight.