Space Station Internet Too Slow for Gaming

Here's one they haven't hit along South Park yet: The International Space Station's earth-to-orbit Internet pipe is too slow to play online video games. Or at least that's what Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfiel aforesaid in response to a question about performin online games in space during a recent Q&A roundup.

Reported to Hadfield—who's flown 2 missions in quad and currently looks to command the ISS close year—the dull connection hurry is a matter of two ships passing in the void (well, a planet and that solar-jury-small-winged space store Ryan Sir Joshua Reynolds goes winging past in Green Lantern). Because the space station's reservation along at eight kilometers per second (that's about 17,896 miles per hour), its Internet link is close to tantamount to dial-risen speeds (it's as wel the cause Reynolds roughly English-Gothic architecture trajectory and station flyby in the movie doesn't quite add up).

Yep, no World of Warcraft in space. Because the forward thing you'Re thought process while floating in zero-G with a once-in-a-life-time view of the planet is when your next 40-person raid's occurrence.

It's probably non as bleak atomic number 3 Hadfield makes information technology sound. NASA's been testing software-defined radios (SDRs) for age and teasing the opening of bringing 100 megabit per second Internet to the blank space station. Back in 2009, the agency aforesaid IT was prepping something called a Communication Navigation and Networking Reconfigurable Testbed, or CoNNeCT), to be added to the ISS this twelvemonth. I can't find anything on its status now, only I do see we'Ra woody at work bringing InterPlanetary Internet online.

But suppose everyone's dearie international space hulk that cost between $35 billion and over $100 billion to gather finally gets a decent earth-space Internet piping. I'd give information technology another half-100 or more before we'ray operative studies equivalent "The Personal effects of Violent Telecasting Gambling in Zero Gravity." Because you just know that one's already in the offing.

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