I don't understand why bandwidth needs to be such a problem.
Invest in a ring of small satellites in mars orbit, have them broadcast to earth satellites using line of sight transmitters for whatever mars satellite is facing the earth. Once you build such a system you can reuse it for each future mars/deep space mission.
Use open standards so other nations can expand the network.
How much would it cost to cover the inner core of the solar system with 100 Mbit/s bandwidth using a mesh network of satellites?
Invest in a ring of small satellites in mars orbit, have them broadcast to earth satellites using line of sight transmitters for whatever mars satellite is facing the earth. Once you build such a system you can reuse it for each future mars/deep space mission.
Nasa was actually doing this but the program got canceled. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Telecommunications_Orbiter
Use open standards so other nations can expand the network. How much would it cost to cover the inner core of the solar system with 100 Mbit/s bandwidth using a mesh network of satellites?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet
Also does anyone want to do an off-planet backup solution startup?