If you have dial up internet you may be lucky and get 56,000 bits per second. If not you may be lucky to get 15,000 bits per second. Of course then if you are near Pluto you get 128 bits per second. That is the data rate that the New Horizons space craft is using to send back huge amounts of data from it Pluto fly by. It will take about 17 months to get all of the data back. Now that is really crummy internet.

So some scientists will have to wait another year and a half just to get all of their data. Of course that data is worth the wait.

Bill Gill

Seventeen months is a long time to wait. But then again, it has been over 10 years getting there. So what's another year and a half? It will be interesting to see what the data yield. I don't know what rate my internet is transmitting, but I have fiber optic cable to the home, so could be pretty high. Hope we can keep on receiving the New Horizon's signal long enough to download all the data it has accumulated. Providing Pluto isn't a death star that blasts the New Horizons craft to bits. LOL

You mean like this?


Bill Gill

Yes, something like that. LOL Thanks, Bill, you made my day. Good photoshop.