{"id":75860,"date":"2018-02-10T00:42:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-10T08:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/the-special-data-device-spacexs-falcon-heavy-sent-to-orbit-is-just-the-start"},"modified":"2018-02-10T00:42:32","modified_gmt":"2018-02-10T08:42:32","slug":"the-special-data-device-spacexs-falcon-heavy-sent-to-orbit-is-just-the-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/the-special-data-device-spacexs-falcon-heavy-sent-to-orbit-is-just-the-start","title":{"rendered":"The special data device SpaceX\u2019s Falcon Heavy sent to orbit is just the start"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-special-data-device-spacexs-falcon-heavy-sent-to-orbit-is-just-the-start.jpeg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A so-called \u2018Starman,\u2019 which is a life-size mannequin wearing a production version of the SpaceX crew spacesuit; a miniature car created by Hot Wheels to commemorate the Roadster and its primary passenger; and something called an Arch (pronounced \u201cArk\u201d), which is not so easy to summarily describe.<\/p>\n<p>The Arch on board is a data crystal (sort of like a Jedi Holocron if you\u2019re mad for Star Wars lore) that contains all three books from Isaac Asimov\u2019s classic<em> Foundation<\/em> trilogy. It\u2019s actually a modest amount of data relative to the possibilities of the storage medium \u2013 in this case, a quartz silica structure which, using 5D optical storage techniques, can eventually achieve a max storage capacity of 360 terabytes on a disk just 3.75 inches in diameter.<\/p>\n<p>But why shoot a tiny quartz disc into space? Why <em>Foundation<\/em>, and why aboard the Falcon Heavy, the crowning achievement of Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX private launch venture thus far?<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/02\/09\/the-special-data-device-spacexs-falcon-heavy-sent-to-orbit-is-just-the-start\/amp\/?__twitter_impression=true\">https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/02\/09\/the-special-data-device-sp...ssion=true<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A so-called \u2018Starman,\u2019 which is a life-size mannequin wearing a production version of the SpaceX crew spacesuit; a miniature car created by Hot Wheels to commemorate the Roadster and its primary passenger; and something called an Arch (pronounced \u201cArk\u201d), which is not so easy to summarily describe. The Arch on board is a data crystal [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,2019,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-elon-musk","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}