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Post by ironhold on May 13, 2023 17:19:16 GMT
This is something I've been mulling over off and on for the last few years.
The United States, United Kingdom, and a few other countries provide some form of television and radio broadcasting for military service members at sea or deployed abroad. This is done both for morale purposes and to keep everyone connected to home, and it's speculated that some ship and submarine captains are ordered to keep one ear out for these services in case they go down unexpectedly.
Because everyone is still on Earth, however, even content broadcast live can often be presented to these distant individuals within 24 hours of first being broadcast. This is how, for example, the US' Armed Forces Network can air a blend of popular news and morning show programs.
What I wonder about, though, is... what if we do colonize other planets?
The need for entertainment isn't going to go away, nor is the longing for home. But it's going to be a while before the infrastructure is in place to actually produce original entertainment content on these colonies.
So how would we deliver Earth entertainment in the interim?
Would these colonies be entirely dependent upon the receipt of pre-recorded material? Would important enough events be broadcast straight from Earth, even with the time delay and energy usage?
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Post by the light works on May 13, 2023 18:15:19 GMT
This is something I've been mulling over off and on for the last few years. The United States, United Kingdom, and a few other countries provide some form of television and radio broadcasting for military service members at sea or deployed abroad. This is done both for morale purposes and to keep everyone connected to home, and it's speculated that some ship and submarine captains are ordered to keep one ear out for these services in case they go down unexpectedly. Because everyone is still on Earth, however, even content broadcast live can often be presented to these distant individuals within 24 hours of first being broadcast. This is how, for example, the US' Armed Forces Network can air a blend of popular news and morning show programs. What I wonder about, though, is... what if we do colonize other planets? The need for entertainment isn't going to go away, nor is the longing for home. But it's going to be a while before the infrastructure is in place to actually produce original entertainment content on these colonies. So how would we deliver Earth entertainment in the interim? Would these colonies be entirely dependent upon the receipt of pre-recorded material? Would important enough events be broadcast straight from Earth, even with the time delay and energy usage? the biggest challenge is range, and it would be heavily dependent on your presumed tech base. in the honorverse, the first half of the timeline had no FTL redio at all, so interstellar communications were done by transporting recordings via FTL ships and wormhole transiting ships. later in the series, FTL radio was developed, which allowed instantaneous in-system comms, but interstellar communication was still not a normal thing. there was another series, I forget exactly which, now, that used micro wormholes to achieve FTL interstellar comms. the big challenge with a near-real-world interstellar comm, would be signal attenuation, which would limit bandwidth. for real world effect of this, news shows would probably transmit a transcript and have local readers, with maybe an image or two. entertainment might have multiple points of recording. so the same sitcom might be recorded on two different planets, and then copies delivered by courier to nearby locations. unless you want to handwave real time communications, best bet is to figure communications lag into the story. |
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Post by GTCGreg on May 14, 2023 0:41:07 GMT
Seeing how the only planet we may colonize in the next hundred years or so would be Mars, it still only takes a radio signal between 4 and 20 minutes, (depending on orbit location) to reach the red planet. And as far as power goes, you only need a couple watts of microwave to get there. You just need a really big antenna.
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Post by wvengineer on May 15, 2023 1:17:11 GMT
I have a Plex server at my house. It is basically a personal Youtube server that only is usable on my network. I have been working on converting over my DVD/Bluray collection and so far I am only about half way through it. This collection consists of about 400 movies, 30 different TV series, and 4,000 pieces of music. All of this is about 500 GB worth of data. However, I keep it to SD level to save data.
I would imagine a space colony would be similar. Each colony would have a data server that shares various forms of programing that people in the area can view. Data storage is getting cheaper, smaller and lighter all the time. By the time we are able to travel to another world, I fully expect data to be super common, but super important to the mission planners.
It would be a simple matter to include a few TB worth of entertainment programs. That can easily provide all the movies and TV shows they could need. Additionally, each resupply mission can bring another drive with the latest movies, TV, and music. Yeah, it's not live, but it is enough to keep people entertained.
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