I'm guessing a returning astronaut with his or her pockets stuffed with SD cards is still faster and cheaper?
So apart from the 1-2 active space stations, where people go without having to do a full $100 million launch, I'd say laser transmission is a pretty good option for transferring data
Not to mention 200Gbps is a lot of data, no way SD cards can match. Particularly as the stream can be constant
Lot of that, out there, past our ionosphere.
4 hours * 6.25 grams per second is 90 kilograms. I doubt anyone can just carry around 90 kilograms in their pockets. Let alone when going to space.
Even with 3 days, that's 18*90g = 1620g = 1.62kg, well within rocket carrying capacity.
However, arranging 360 SD cards by hand in the right order is much harder than relying on TCP SEQ numbers, though.
> With data rates of 200 gigabits per second, a satellite could transmit more than 2 terabytes of data—roughly as much as 1,000 high-definition movies—in a single 5-minute pass over a ground station.
No, 1 Micro SD would be transmitted every 5s.
Plus it's 200Gb/s = 25GB/s, so that's 250mg/40s.
4h × 6.25mg/s = 90g
3days × 6.25mg/s = 1.62kg
Now with the max theoretical spec'd 128TB 2g SDUC cards, that's 101.25g for 3 days.
Not too bad eh?
You have to factor in the round trip time for an astronaut and multiply that many seconds by 200 billion to get the total to compare against.
At 25GB/s you’d fill up a 500GB SD card in 20 seconds.
200 gigabits equals 25 gigabytes, and is five percent of a 500GB SD card.