alt Hacker NewsDistant space probes are power constrained though.
It's entirely possible the degradation of their RTG power sources would be more expensive doing the compression then just sending the data as is.
Distant space probes are power constrained though.
It's entirely possible the degradation of their RTG power sources would be more expensive doing the compression then just sending the data as is.
RTG degrade no matter what you do with the resulting heat. It doesn't matter if you compress stuff or just let them cpus idle be.