Communications

Nothing crosses the system faster than light, so everything important is either slow and public or fast and close. There is no third option.

Overview

Interplanetary communication is radio, and radio moves at lightspeed. That is the entire explanation. A message to a planet on the far side of the sun takes as long as the geometry says it takes — minutes at best, most of an hour when the alignment is bad — and no amount of money shortens it. The Sphere has simply built itself around the delay.

The result behaves like mail rather than conversation. You compose, you send, you go do something else, and a reply arrives on its own schedule with no expectation that you are still at the desk. Contracts, courts, and command structures all assume it. An order given across planetary distance is an order given to someone who will be acting on stale information by the time they act, and everyone plans for that.

The second fact is that broadcast is public. A radio transmission aimed at a planet is aimed at everything in that direction, and anybody in the cone can listen. Encryption is therefore not a precaution but a default — every meaningful message in the system is encrypted, which means every meaningful message is also a standing invitation to whoever can break it.

How It Works

Broadcast radio — the interplanetary tier:

• Lightspeed delay, minutes to the better part of an hour depending on alignment
• Aimed at a general area, not a recipient. Anyone in the cone receives it
• Encrypted by default; the traffic itself is impossible to hide, only its contents
• Traffic analysis is its own discipline — who is transmitting, how much, and toward what

Directed laser — the local tier:

• Point-to-point, tight beam, effectively impossible to intercept without sitting in the path
• Requires proximity. Ship-to-ship, ship-to-station, orbital. Not an interplanetary tool
• Near-instant at the ranges it works at
• Requires both parties to know where the other is and hold alignment

Status

Stable and unglamorous. Every attempt at something faster has been a fraud, a dead end, or classified into silence.