
Europe Proposes Cheap Quantum Optics Link to the International Space Station - vectorbunny
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/507361/europe-proposes-cheap-quantum-optics-link-to-the-space-station/
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tocomment
Any idea what they would be testing for exactly? What behavior would they
expect to be different in entangled photons at that distance?

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dexter313
Just testing a longer distance through the air, and testing how they pass the
athmosphere.

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jcrei
Does this mean we will get internet on the moon, and consequentially
interplanetary internet?

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indiecore
>Such a camera would be straightforward to build at relatively low cost and
could easily be chucked into the back of resupply ship for astronauts to set
up when they have free moment.

Having worked in a space agency allow me to say "AHAHAHAHAHAHA". Nothing gets
"chucked" into a resupply, the best they can probably do is try to schedule it
in sometime in the next five years. This won't be happening tomorrow.

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arethuza
Perhaps ask SpaceX to do it - they shipped fresh ice cream in a refrigerator
in their supply mission...

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indiecore
Which was undoubtedly planned for, weighed and included in the manifests
several years before launch. Not to mention getting NASA approval for being in
space (lot of crazy tests), NASA dietician approval (because it's a
foodstuff), NASA chemist approval (make sure nothing bad will happen to the
space station if it gets somewhere). Trust me there were way too many people
involved in getting that ice cream up there.

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arrrg
I think you might be taking everything a bit too literally and you might be
way too pedantic. What they meant is that the equipment is compact and that in
principle it wouldn’t be complicated or outside the capabilities of the
current cargo vehicles (ATV, HTV, Dargon, Progress) to bring it to the ISS.

I also think that you can’t really compare the ISS to anything else. The ISS
is not some random satellite. It has many cargo ships bringing massive amounts
of cargo to it all the time (thus allowing necessarily for much more
flexibility – human lives are at stake, so your cargo capabilities better be
more than ample for the job, allowing for contingency plans). There simply
isn’t anything like it in space.

