A brief note about the "Netflix problem" on Mars.

Andrew Tanenbaum said in 1981: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway".

I do not have a Netflix subscription. I do have a significant collection of DVDs and music CDs.

I see absolutely no reason why some petabytes of entertainment could not be shipped from Earth on each trip. Presumably some terabytes would take the return leg.

Storage costs, in terms of money, mass and volume are negligible even with today's technology. 1 TiB microSD cards are widely available commercial products. Each drive is 15x11x1mm and has a mass of 250mg. 1 EiB fits in 0.17 m^3 and masses 262 kg. Packaging may take that up to a cubic metre and a tonne. Those numbers should fall substantially in the next decade or so.

I wonder if those who make that argument are members of the Instant Gratification Generation?