Space Minds The Ultimate Backup Drive: The Moon
Jun 19, 2025
Chris Stott, Chair and CEO of Lonestar Data Holdings, discusses groundbreaking concepts for lunar data storage as a safeguard against potential digital disasters on Earth. He dives into the challenges of establishing off-world data centers, addressing latency, security, and geopolitical factors in this emerging lunar economy. Stott reveals the implications of U.S.-China competition in space infrastructure and shares exciting visions for human habitation and resource acquisition on the Moon, highlighting the transformative potential of commercial space initiatives.
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IM2 Payload Test To Lunar Orbit
- Lone Star's IM2 payload carried hardware and software to lunar orbit for storage and delay-tolerant networking tests.
- The mission hosted eight terabytes of storage, an RISC-V chip, and multiple commercial and government data payloads for validation.
IT Often Missing From Lunar Plans
- Chris Stott highlights a surprising omission: information technology and data centers are missing from many lunar plans.
- He argues compute and edge data are essential to enable robotics, 3D printing, and in-situ resource use on the Moon.
Moon As A Global Data Backup
- Stott compares the Moon to Svalbard's seed vault and positions lunar storage as a global backup for critical terrestrial data.
- He stresses physical threats on Earth, from human error to sabotage, justify off-world backups.
