1000 year data storage for autonomous robotic facility

Bernhard Kuemel schrieb:

Hello,

I think it is too optimistic to believe that all the needed parts will survive 1000 years, even if stored as spare parts. All metallic contact surfaces will oxidize. Plastic parts will degrade. Isolations will fail.

A building that should provide good storage conditions would not survive this long time.

Bye

Cryogenic storage of parts that can stand thermal cycling and cold temperatures (should be most of them) should reduce most mechanisms of failure. For example, liquid nitrogen temperatures (77K) would reduce aging, in theory, by 2^20 or about 10^6:1, so the items would age maybe the equivalent of 8 hours in 1000 years. Of course the warranties will expire in that length of time, and probably all the companies that made them, and quite possibly many of the countries in which the companies were located will also be gone.

Also keeping liquid nitrogen around continously for 1000 years on earth is non-trivial.

Austrian "Bernhard Kuemel" wrote: I'm planning a robotic facility [3] that needs to maintain hardware (exchange defective parts) autonomously for up to 1000 years. One of the problems is to maintain firmware and operating systems for this period. What methods do you think are suitable? Top priority is it must work about 1000 years. Price is not a big issue. I thought about this....

hans Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, you should think about that much, much more... That "1000 year" thing was tried during your Great Grandpa's days. It didn't work too well. Collapsed after a dozend years.

(...)

I think you need to do a threat analysis. What are the probable threats to data and hardware integrity. Corrosion, oxidation, depolymerization, insect attack, glass creep, plasticizer evaporation, etc cover some of the mechanical and chemical threats. Electronic threats are charge loss, package leakage, water vapor incursion, EMP, CME, magnetic media print-through, magnetic depolarization, cosmic rays, etc are some of the electronic threats. Also, if the media data density were sufficiently high to be useful, where the energy necessary to flip a bit is low, it would also be susceptible to destruction by EMP and possibly CME. What you're proposing is a reliability engineering nightmare.

It's likely that whatever scheme you offer, would also prevent access to the preserved data, thus making regular verification difficult. How do you know that the data is still there without taking a big risk in trying to read and verify it? You can bury your time capsule, but you still couldn't prove that the data is still there.

About 1000 years ago, we were just coming out of the dark ages. Proposing a 1000 year document preservation of e.g. the Library at Alexandria, would have the equivalent technical limitations as your current proposal. I doubt that the dark ages religious establishments could have succeeded given the wide range of totally inconceivable and unpredictable threats that have arrived in the last 1000 years. It's equally unlikely that you could defend your data against the next 1000 years of currently known threats, much less the unknown threats. All it would take is a biological niche to open for bacteria that eats silicon or lives on Epoxy-B, and your archive is gone.

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Inert gas, sealed capsule, under antartic ice, lots of redundant copies, most media would probably last 1000 years.

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Consult the Romans, they knew how to do it :-)

As others have suggested, a threat analysis is in order and then consider storage under inert gas. And write the instructions on good paper, like this:

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Regards, Joerg 

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Take a look at

Their work is, in some ways, a much simpler problem than what you're proposing, and it's still a very difficult problem.

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I'm worried that components or assemblies (circuit boards with components) crack or break with large temperature changes due to different thermal expansion coefficients.

Absolutely. That's what this is all about. Linde machines probably won't last long enough. Peltier coolers don't cool deep enough. I'm waiting for adiabatic demagnetization of gadolinium alloy coolers.

Bernhard

This is about media being used during these 1000 years as a source of firmware and operating systems to keep the robotic facility functional.

Romans ! ?

What about the Egyptians, Indians or even the Chinese? Don't their cultures and inventions go back even farther? Rome is in ruins today. The Great Pyramids are still standing. Perhaps Bernhard needs a more durable material like stone.

claims about nickel data plates: "Nickel has a much longer life span than microfilm up to thousands of years." Something like nickel or gold might solve this problem. Lots of precious metals might attract thieves, though.

Polyethyleneterephtalate (PET) microfilm is thought to last up to 700 years. So maybe Teflon can last 1000 years.

There are teflon insulated cables.

Egyptian pyramids are over 4000 years old. They may not be in sufficient condition, but I still have hope that with improved technology/possibilities we can build something that lasts 1000 years. But the daily temperature changes in the Australian desert certainly require very durable building materials. Glass ceramics come to my mind.

Bernhard

It's so thin, not worth the theft. To reduce the temptation cover it with something so it isn't shiny. Vandalism is much more of a concern.

I'd trust metal on glass and similar structures much more. A lot of times adverse effects in modern materials only become discovered decades after the fat. Like the spontaneous combustion that happened in old movie archives.

Even here it may be best to stay with the true and tried. I have a transformer that's probably almost 100 years old, the secondary is copper insulated with cloth. Looks like new. If something shows next to no decay over a hundred years chances are it may last another 900 years. With modern plastics we often don't really know.

Unless there is a continuous stream of money from pharaohs, king or admission-paying tourists even pyramids fall apart:

The other problem is theft of building materials from the actual buildings. AFAIK it already started with the Ottomans raiding the pyramids for limestone. Guess they were not willing to pay full retail pricing ...

BTW, you might want to build the robot with through-hole parts. That reduces the chance that someone turns it on in 998 years, doesn't work, and a hair crack is discovered in a big ceramic cap.

I wonder what an extended 1000-year warranty would cost :-)

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

But maybe you could have some fun anyway.

Tim

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That might work if the magnetic poles don't shift, if AGW doesn't make the ice disappear, or the desiccant doesn't saturate and moisture condenses on everything. Probably a few dozen other things that can go wrong. However, that's not the real problem. In 1000 years, the English language is likely to change into something unrecognizable. Compare modern English with Middle English from about 1400: That's only 600 years old and I can only imagine what it will be like in 1000 years. In electronic format, there's also the non-trivial problem of being able to actually read the data. Got anything handy that will read an 8" floppy, Maxtor WORM drive, Syquest removable HD, or Bernoulli disk? What can one do if some obscure i/o chip needed read memory blows up and nobody has a replacement? I'm sure that there will be a 3D silicon printer to make your own chips, but who will be able to find the data sheet? Got any Signetics DCL 8000 chips handy, which is only 41 years old? Of course, one can't use anything with fusible links or polysilicon fuses as these will either blow from EMP, corrosion, or current induced metal migration. However, if one must use a PLA, the programming instructions should probably be included, assuming someone would be able to read them in 1000 years.

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for the master copy: core rope memory. you said price not a big issue, that'll test how not-big it really is.

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Jane Austen is perfectly readable, as is Sir Walter Scott. Shakespeare can get tricky. Chaucer is very hard to read.

People tell me that Spanish, like Cervantes, has changed very little compared to English.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom laser drivers and controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro   acquisition and simulation

Probably would not end well with BGA lead-free boards, or QFN boards.

Through hole and gull wing SMT parts with leaded solder seem to do fine, even with thermal shock. Cycling over the military temperature range (-55~105°C) is a similar change, however it's not centered at room temperature, so the stress could be greater.

I wonder if you could make something almost passive that would cool to, say, dry ice temperatures using radiative cooling into a desert night sky.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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That's because the English language changed radically during that period. Note the dates below.

1775 - 1817 Jane Austen 1771 - 1832 Sir Walter Scott 1564 - 1615 Bill Shakespear 1343 - 1400 Geoffry Chaucer The later authors wrote in Modern English. Chaucer wrote in Middle English. Modern English is fairly readable, but only 400 years old. Go back another 100 years and it's a mess. Another 200 years back and the Olde English is completely undecipherable.

Also Latin, which was the reason that the legal profession adopted it as their favored language. Since it's a dead language, it's unlikely to change. Therefore legal definitions, interpretations, judgments, and laws will not change over the years.

However, that's not the case with a living language, such as English. It changes in many ways, all of which are beyond the control of any official language police. At the present rate that technology, ethnicity, and advertising are butchering the language, it's unlikely that it will remain in its present form for very long. 1000 years from now, it will look as strange as Olde English.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

• add - 3 in "parallel" using majority logic for output a and checking.

• see above.

• see above.

** Semiconductor storage is useless in a RAD environment.

• Degrades - maybe not as fast as the old acetate movie films, but 100 year life is not realistic (but may be better in a RAD environment).

• of ideas mentioned,this seems the best. now,how does it get read?

• maybe good enough for 20-10 years.

• NOPE! Leather,if kept in a dry environment is at least an order of magnitude better (eg: Dead Sea scrolls). Proven technology. Proven characteristics. Good enough for a few thousand years.

• See above.

• Stay away from anything electronic..mechanical parts if not used nominally do not wear out and reasonably tolerate a RAD environment.