🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <KERS.91May13111546@cdollin.hpl.hp.com>, kers@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Chris Dollin) writes:
> Careful, David; maybe the material for tapes is also an essential part of the
> mining ships. What do you do if you can't build the ship because the last
> gramme of poly-unobtainable-thene, needed for the scrawlbar-widget on the
> pilots desktop, has just been used to record a Very Significant Digit of the
> answer (maybe the ships flight plan ...)?

This one has already been answered in this newsgroup, this year.
You use space itself as your store (think "delay-line").
Your ground station transmits a string of pulses, N per second,
to a space-ship D metres away, which simply reflects them back
to the ground station.  The total distance travelled is 2D, at
a round-trip time of 2D/c seconds, so space holds 2ND/c pulses.
When you want more storage, you just move the spaceship further
away.  You can have as much storage as you want, if you're willing
to wait for it.  Have you read the SF story "the Very Slow Time
Machine"?  This is a Very Slow Turing Machine.

-- 
There is no such thing as a balanced ecology; ecosystems are chaotic.