Hackers Plan Space Satellites to Combat Internet Censorship

This news could just as well be in Education & Media, or even Science & Technology, but I think it probably suits the Space Exploration forum best.

Plans are afoot to launch a network of private satellites to take communications literally above and beyond the powers of Earthbound censors.

Computer hackers plan to take the internet beyond the reach of censors by putting their own communication satellites into orbit. The scheme was outlined at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

The project's organisers said the Hackerspace Global Grid will also involve developing a grid of ground stations to track and communicate with the satellites. Longer term they hope to help put an amateur astronaut on the moon.

bbc.co.uk

It sounds very ambitious to me, and also a bit dubious. Can a private consortium get a satellite, never mind a whole network of them, into space without the help and support of governments and big corporations? And even if they do, what's to stop some illiberal but powerful government, like China's for example, from shooting them down? The Chinese have already proved they have the means to shoot down a satellite in orbit. Needless to say, the United States has this technology too.

Will this project come to fruition? Will the worldwide spread of free communications require the support of a world power, such as the USA, to bring it to fruition, just as the worldwide spread of free trade in the nineteenth century needed the support of Great Britain to bring it about in the face of opposition from other powers? And will the USA (or another power, though it's hard to see which one) step up to the plate?

Do you think this initiative has a chance of getting, ahem, off the ground?

You're 'shoot down satellites' technology was a forum, when it finally opened, I didn't read a single sentence.

This kid musters up a few billion dollars then I might take his plan as tangible.

Other than that he is a kid with mathematics, and no hardware.

I can make a hat!

reply to post by Illustronic


kids with mathematics pretty much help create everything around us, If not for a college drop out we may not even have had the modern home computer era...

reply to post by benrl


That was developed to crack the Enigma machine of WWII. It has progressed since taking up a whole building of very hot tubes to do what your cell phone can do today. It was not done by kids.

Originally posted by benrl
reply to post by Illustronic

 

kids with mathematics pretty much help create everything around us, If not for a college drop out we may not even have had the modern home computer era...

Yeah, they sometimes turn out to become the richest man in the universe. Slight clashes with authority can occur in the beginning...

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver


Not my profession, Gates did more to cause us extra work than anything, nice he got China to be able to communicate with the financieres though, Your hero? My devil.

His software still doesn't communicate graphics, he doesn't release upgrades cross-platform the same year, I know because I have to transfer files to the other side of that platform.

One that hates the powers to be should hate Gates for what he wants to control. Luckily he is not able to yet, Adobe got kind of big for him and he can never own the internet like he wanted to, Explorer is the absolute worst browser out there. If you use Explorer you are archived for ever, and eventually sold to the highest bidder.

Stay thirsty.

Hackers? Putting communications satellites into Orbit? It's primarily a question of money you say.....? Well, it is mighty convenient that a bunch of other hackers, often using the Anon title, are off hacking banks, bank accounts and credit card numbers all over the globe and seemingly, with a sense of urgency all of the sudden, too.

You don't think........?..naww... couldn't be.


In another thought, I think it's very feasible. Google has a competition with the Lunar X prize where the requirement is 90% private funding. Let a nation like China find a way to make a hacker-net like that play to their own agenda, and they'd launch the satellites themselves. If not them, someone else. There are several nations capable now. Even Iran has sent up a satellite of some sort.

It's a very interesting concept and until someone was willing to start shooting satellites and really making things dangerous with flying scrap metal up there, the ultimate check-mate to censorship attempts. lol... I love the creativity!

Already posted hours previously guys.

thread found here.

reply to post by Astyanax


How in the hell do these hackers have the $$ to send satellites into space?

I too wonder how they will come up with the money.

If they do, more power to them. I don't think anybody will shoot the satellites down unless they pose a threat to existing satellites, and you need access to data on existing satellites to make sure the orbits won't interfere. I haven't seen that information freely available but maybe they can hack that too.

It's probably just another eavesdropping opportunity if it happens.

Originally posted by Violence
Already posted hours previously guys.

thread found here.

That's posted in Breaking Alternative News.

What's with this "Already posted hours previously" comment? There's no problem with posting the same topic in another forum besides breaking alternative news. If your comment said "see this other thread for more info" it would be more polite and appropriate.