I’ve been playing with an idea that would involve running a machine over a delay-tolerant mesh network. The thing is, each packet is precious and needs to be pretty much self contained in that situation, while modern systems assume SSH-like continuous interaction with the user.
Has anyone heard of anything pre-existing that would work here? I figured if anyone would know about situations where each character is expensive, it would be you folks.
Ask NASA
Do they post their software somewhere? What they use for space probes is exactly what I would need, but I kind of figured it would be a trade secret.
I was kidding. 😁 There’s nothing real time about C&C with space probes. And the ISS is close enough I doubt it’s an issue.
Yeah, I want not real time. The goal of having containers in the first place is to enable as much as possible without needing to put a human in the loop, since you have no idea how long each packet will spend in transit.
If I could emulate Curiosity’s onboard computer that would be a decent starting point.
In that case it might not hurt to reach out to some NASA email addresses. The people who write that stuff are, after all, nerds like us, and would probably be happy to share whatever they are allowed to share.
It’s funded by taxes so, security issues aside, there shouldn’t be a lot of trade secrets.
Government agencies, in my experience, tend to believe in security through obscurity; even the ones that don’t worry about spies as much as NASA. That said, maybe it’s worth a shot. I’ll have to figure out who’s the best person to bug.
I only know that the laptops on the ISS are Thinkpads that run on Debian Oldstable.
But that’s not really helpful for you.
That’s funny. I’m on a really old laptop right now, and I’m running oldstable. Even going up from oldold broke it a bit.
It’s still plenty fast. Moore’s law is a bit of a paper tiger at this point.