Joseph P Farrell – A few days ago I blogged about Elon Musk’s launch of a Tesla space roadster, and you’ll recall that I wasn’t buying the story that this was just a “stunt” or that there wasn’t the possibility of a “secret payload.” Well, it seems others weren’t buying that story either, and Mr. G.D. spotted this article about what that secret payload may have been:

SpaceX Hid a Second, Secret Payload Aboard Falcon Heavy, And It Sounds Amazing

The essence of this story is that the hidden payload was a vast new data storage technology:

Stashed inside the midnight-cherry Roadster was a mysterious, small object designed to last for millions (perhaps billions) of years – even in extreme environments like space, or on the distant surfaces of far-flung planetary bodies.

Called an Arch (pronounced ‘Ark’), this tiny storage device is built for long-term data archiving, holding libraries of information encoded on a small disc of quartz crystal, not much larger than a coin.
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The Arch looks like a shrunk-down DVD or Blu-ray, but its potential for data storage goes way beyond any optical discs you have in your home. Continue reading →