1000 year data storage for autonomous robotic facility

Sorry for repost, I posted to sci.electronics before, which does not exist.

Hi!

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,
if necessary.

I thought about this:

ROMs/PROMs, replacing them when checksum fails.

ROM/PROM masters, being copied once a year to flash ROM.

1000 flash ROMs, refreshing once a year from the ones that still have a
valid checksum.

Non electronic masters:

Microfilm/microfiche
HD-Rosetta (ion beam engraved nickel disc)
glass CD/DVD
Paper [2]
punched cards

The drawback of the non electronic masters is their reader system which
can fail mechanically/optically (dust, gears, ...) and requires
electronic components/firmware themselves.

Is it possible to make robots or their spare parts that suffer only
minor degradation when kept as spare parts for 1000 years at good
storage conditions? semiconductors, inductors, (non electrolytic)
capacitors, circuit boards, plastic/metal structures, CCD/CMOS cameras,
actuators, solar cells, thermo couples, etc. Batteries are probably
difficult.


Thanks, Bernhard


[1]
http://www.norsam.com/rosetta.html
http://www.norsam.com/nanorosettawp.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD-Rosetta

[2]
something like http://ronja.twibright.com/optar/

[3]
A cold store to keep humans frozen (vitrified) in LN2 until mind
uploading (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_u...ial_sectioning ) becomes
possible.

Bernhard Kuemel schrieb:

Is it possible to make robots or their spare parts that suffer only
minor degradation when kept as spare parts for 1000 years at good
storage conditions? semiconductors, inductors, (non electrolytic)
capacitors, circuit boards, plastic/metal structures, CCD/CMOS cameras,
actuators, solar cells, thermo couples, etc. Batteries are probably
difficult.

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

On Fri, 03 May 2013 11:00:43 +0200, Bernhard Kuemel
wrote:

Sorry for repost, I posted to sci.electronics before, which does not exist.

Hi!

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?

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.


Top priority is it must work about 1000 years. Price is not a big issue,
if necessary.

I thought about this:

ROMs/PROMs, replacing them when checksum fails.

ROM/PROM masters, being copied once a year to flash ROM.

1000 flash ROMs, refreshing once a year from the ones that still have a
valid checksum.

Non electronic masters:

Microfilm/microfiche
HD-Rosetta (ion beam engraved nickel disc)
glass CD/DVD
Paper [2]
punched cards

The drawback of the non electronic masters is their reader system which
can fail mechanically/optically (dust, gears, ...) and requires
electronic components/firmware themselves.

Is it possible to make robots or their spare parts that suffer only
minor degradation when kept as spare parts for 1000 years at good
storage conditions? semiconductors, inductors, (non electrolytic)
capacitors, circuit boards, plastic/metal structures, CCD/CMOS cameras,
actuators, solar cells, thermo couples, etc. Batteries are probably
difficult.


Thanks, Bernhard


[1]
http://www.norsam.com/rosetta.html
http://www.norsam.com/nanorosettawp.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD-Rosetta

[2]
something like http://ronja.twibright.com/optar/

[3]
A cold store to keep humans frozen (vitrified) in LN2 until mind
uploading (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_u...ial_sectioning ) becomes
possible.

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.... snip 1000 year crap

hanson wrote:

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.

On Fri, 03 May 2013 11:00:43 +0200, 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?
(...)

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.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Fri, 03 May 2013 10:43:04 -0400, Spehro Pefhany
wrote:

On Fri, 03 May 2013 11:00:43 +0200, Bernhard Kuemel
wrote:

Sorry for repost, I posted to sci.electronics before, which does not exist.

Hi!

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?

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.


Top priority is it must work about 1000 years. Price is not a big issue,
if necessary.

I thought about this:

ROMs/PROMs, replacing them when checksum fails.

ROM/PROM masters, being copied once a year to flash ROM.

1000 flash ROMs, refreshing once a year from the ones that still have a
valid checksum.

Non electronic masters:

Microfilm/microfiche
HD-Rosetta (ion beam engraved nickel disc)
glass CD/DVD
Paper [2]
punched cards

The drawback of the non electronic masters is their reader system which
can fail mechanically/optically (dust, gears, ...) and requires
electronic components/firmware themselves.

Is it possible to make robots or their spare parts that suffer only
minor degradation when kept as spare parts for 1000 years at good
storage conditions? semiconductors, inductors, (non electrolytic)
capacitors, circuit boards, plastic/metal structures, CCD/CMOS cameras,
actuators, solar cells, thermo couples, etc. Batteries are probably
difficult.


Thanks, Bernhard


[1]
http://www.norsam.com/rosetta.html
http://www.norsam.com/nanorosettawp.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD-Rosetta

[2]
something like http://ronja.twibright.com/optar/

[3]
A cold store to keep humans frozen (vitrified) in LN2 until mind
uploading (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_u...ial_sectioning ) becomes
possible.

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


--

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

Uwe Hercksen wrote:


Bernhard Kuemel schrieb:

Is it possible to make robots or their spare parts that suffer only
minor degradation when kept as spare parts for 1000 years at good
storage conditions? semiconductors, inductors, (non electrolytic)
capacitors, circuit boards, plastic/metal structures, CCD/CMOS cameras,
actuators, solar cells, thermo couples, etc. Batteries are probably
difficult.

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.


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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_scrolls

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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.... snip 1000 year crap

hanson wrote:

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.

Take a look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now

http://longnow.org/clock/

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

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

On Friday, May 3, 2013 6:32:19 AM UTC-7, Uwe Hercksen wrote:

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.

What if everything is coated with Armor-all, BoeShield AND sun screen?

On 05/03/2013 04:43 PM, Spehro Pefhany 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?

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.

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

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

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