Of course! Right?

I mean, the day before launch, copy over all the blocks*.dat and other files needed. Then turn it on while it's still here, keeping it running as long as possible until right before launching to sync up the last possible minute.

Then when it's in space, uh, ... well, I don't know how it works, but I guess it's already turned on while it's flying there.

How many satellites will there be? From the ad, it seems there will be 18 to 24 cubesats? Each one connected to a ground station or each other?

I made this picture in Paint.



Let me know if I understand this or not. The lines are supposed to be, well, line of sight communication between ground stations and each other.

New desktop wallpaper!

How many satellites depends on funding:

• 4 - a demo, with coverage gaps, high latencies
• 16 - adequate, with some periods/areas of high latency
• 24 - ideal target
• 32 - super duper

The satellites can communicate with each other (P2P!).  There will be multiple ground stations in multiple countries around the world.


That's all I can release for the moment.  Every landmass except Antarctica should have full coverage.

FAQs:  How long does a cubesat stay up there?  How long is a single cubesat reachable during an orbit?

With COTS parts, operational life is predicted at 2-3 years, possibly years longer.

Fixed.  Thanks for pointing that out.

Some things got moved to BitSat.org.

so how much btc is needed 2 do it?

With the full 18kHz of bandwidth at 252kHz LW it looks like you could potentially transmit up to ~25kbps (Mode D) to ~60kbps (Mode A) using the Digital Radio Mondiale codec.  So almost 11MB could be transmitted per hour in Mode D.  Or about 1.8GB per week in Mode D.  Which is about 94GB per year in mode D.

A satellite receiver.

The project specification indicates that the receiver should be made with Common, Off The Shelf (COTS) parts, and may be purchased or built by a skilled hobbyist.

What about a system where the Block chain is carved up and stored on people's PCs in smaller chunks, actually, they are probably working on this already, a bit like i2p

https://geti2p.net/en/

Some new press on the WSJ MONEYBEAT blog BitBeat: Bitcoin Coder Garzik Signs Deal to Deploy ‘BitSats’ In Space