I work on autonomous submarines that image the seafloor, and let me tell you it is very hard to engineer deep ocean systems. Just operationally, testing things in rolling waves is a brutal job. Arguably at parity with space as an engineering design environment.
I (briefly) worked as a test engineer on a similar kind of contract. To meet the UX requirements for the system we were building, it had to be reliably operable in sea state 7+. The customer wanted touch screen interfaces. I exited that project when they were looking for volunteers to go spend time offshore in the Gulf of Alaska in bad weather, because that was the test environment they could find that met the requirements. Insanity.
I forget who said it, but there's a quote about how _of course_ we know more about space than the bottom of the ocean - in space we only have to deal with one atmosphere.
I worked for an L1 blockchain for a couple years and while the term "decentralized" is bandied about a bit too much, reading articles like this does underscore how vulnerable global traffic is.
e.g. some EVM chains have a majority of "stake" in either one country or several adjacent countries (particularly in Asia). A cable cut there, which the article points out has happened, can lead to the blockchain getting cut off or even halting.
I think the issue is that centralization is more economical due to scale, but that assumes all else (geopolitics or other black swan events) don't impact things.
We saw a similar thing with supply chains and chip suppliers.
> reading articles like this does underscore how vulnerable global traffic is.
Then also remember that the internet haven't seen a global outage since forever, worst parts have been when some submarine cables break and traffic has to route around it, but never has the entire thing fully went down. Considering how most of it is built with bandaids, silver-tape and WD40, it's surprising it is as resilient as it is.
Underwater cables have been one of the more awe inspiring things for me. I know nothing about them but they seem SO crazy and yet we have them running all across the oceans. .·°՞( ̑ ᗜ ̑ )՞°·.
Someone else with more experience could chime in but I would put it at less practical due to latency (sats are very high up), bandwidth (one laser vs a bundle of 1000s of fiber optic cables), cost (to overcome latency you need a closer orbit which requires more sats), single point of failure, lifespan, intercepted communications, solar flares… and that’s just off the top of my head.
I don't actually think latency would be that much worse.
Of course, it depends on the altitude of the satellite but speed of light in a fiber optic is only ~2/3rds of speed of light in a vacuum so you can afford some detour
e.g. some EVM chains have a majority of "stake" in either one country or several adjacent countries (particularly in Asia). A cable cut there, which the article points out has happened, can lead to the blockchain getting cut off or even halting.
We saw a similar thing with supply chains and chip suppliers.
Then also remember that the internet haven't seen a global outage since forever, worst parts have been when some submarine cables break and traffic has to route around it, but never has the entire thing fully went down. Considering how most of it is built with bandaids, silver-tape and WD40, it's surprising it is as resilient as it is.
Like statistically impossibly unlucky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d99_h30swtM
Of course, it depends on the altitude of the satellite but speed of light in a fiber optic is only ~2/3rds of speed of light in a vacuum so you can afford some detour