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Comment by hparadiz | Hacker News Reader

Suddenly the idea of having a CA hosted in space on a satellite issuing certs seems like a good idea.

You're assuming that satellites are exterritorial. They aren't, they're ab initio the launching state's property and responsibility, barring other agreements to transfer them - and getting one out into a "legal void" isn't going to be trivial.

Over the centuries I am sure there will be random satellites that are defunct that will be hacked or otherwise "taken over" by someone with the right skills. These things are tiny compared to the distances involved and in the future you might end up using them as data reservoirs since in many cases it will be cost prohibitive for any authority to go collect or otherwise stake authority over an old piece of hardware considered junked.

In a hundred years, sure. Current satellites have neither storage nor compute capabilities of note.

That said, they don't have to grab the satellite. They have to grab you. Computer vandalism/sabotage/... laws in a lot of legal systems already apply to the controlling people in their home location regardless of the physical location/origin of the computer activity. Your controlling the computer/satellite/botnet/... is the illegal act, not the network packets leaving those systems.

They'll have to identify you first though, which might give some legal shielding.

A ship in international waters with satellite internet connection would be much cheaper, except it runs into the same problems as described by the sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469397

You don't get 1,361 W/m² of continuous free energy when you're Earth bound and all those pesky water molecules.

> free energy

It is free only if you ignore the cost of getting the thing into the orbit in the first place.

Edit: also, AFAIK, normal microchips (without special radiation hardening) don't last that long in space

Also, pirates

New startup idea: Starlink for TLS.

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