EventHelix’s fictional RFP asks how an AI could give settlements on Proxima b continuous access to an LLM hosted in orbit—without landing, teaching, or otherwise intervening directly. It sets detailed targets for latency, availability, terminals, coverage, and radio interference, but it is a design challenge, not a demonstrated mission plan. The premise and requirements are laid out in Terminus: the RFP.
What the RFP is asking for
The scenario describes a civilization roughly 400 years short of inventing the printing press. An observing AI wants to provide continuous, settlement-wide interactive LLM access from spacecraft. It can manufacture satellites and parachute self-contained terminals to the surface, but its rules prohibit landing, teaching, or direct intervention.
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The terminals connect to users’ Wi-Fi devices and act as local base stations. The RFP asks for a system that begins with 10,000 terminals and can grow to one million without redesign. These are authored requirements in a fictional engineering prompt, not measured properties of Proxima b or evidence that such a system has been built.
What performance the proposed service must meet
The RFP separates normal operation from a recoverable failure state. Its amendment followed a proposal showing that rerouting around a failed link would take longer than the original first-token limit. Rather than call every slower session an outage, it sets two latency budgets and counts either as functioning service.
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| Requirement | RFP target | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| First token, failure-free | Within 300 ms at the 95th percentile | The normal-operation response target. |
| First token during failed-link reroute | Within 600 ms | A degraded but still functioning conversation may take longer while a session is rerouted. |
| Token stalls | Under 100 ms at the 99th percentile | Limits pauses during an ongoing response. |
| Satellite handover interruption | 100 ms maximum | Constrains interruption as a terminal changes satellite links. |
| Settlement availability | 99.9% per settlement | For this requirement, service meeting either the normal or degraded latency budget counts as functioning. |
| Recovery from a single failure | No settlement silenced for more than one minute | A failure should not leave a settlement without service beyond that limit. |
These are acceptance targets proposed by the RFP, not performance results. The distinction between a degraded session and an outage is central: a slower answer within the 600 ms reroute budget still counts toward availability, while a service interruption does not.
What makes the surface terminals demanding
Each terminal must arrive by parachute, operate untouched for ten years, and become service-ready within 15 minutes of a cold start. The cold-start condition is intentionally severe: it begins with no almanac, clock, or position. Following an outage, the terminal must return to air within 30 seconds.
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In practical terms, the proposal must explain how the terminal can autonomously establish where and when it is, find a usable satellite connection, and resume service without a technician. The RFP specifies these behaviors but does not establish that a particular terminal design can meet them.
Coverage and the planet’s assumed conditions
EventHelix’s 2026 scenario places settlements in a narrow band near the day-night boundary of a tidally locked planet. The RFP specifies settlements within 20 degrees of the terminator, an 11.2-Earth-day rotation period and year, and persistent dayward surface winds of approximately 5–15 m/s. Those values are scenario inputs, not independently verified planetary measurements.
Rank #3
The coverage goal is continuous access across the inhabited band, not merely occasional connectivity when a satellite passes overhead. A proposal therefore needs to explain how it maintains service through satellite handovers and failures while scaling from 10,000 terminals to one million. The RFP names total mass, power, latency margin, robustness, and credible scaling as evaluation considerations, but does not select a constellation or compute architecture.
Why radio interference is part of the challenge
The RFP assumes coherent stellar radio bursts at approximately 1–3 GHz, overlapping the L and S bands a terrestrial engineer might initially consider. It requires degraded operation during major flares and a navigation alert within ten seconds.
This is a design constraint within the fictional scenario, not a claim that Proxima b has a measured radio-burst environment of that kind. The prompt asks a proposal to account for interference in communications and navigation; it does not identify a tested mitigation or prove that the proposed service can remain within its latency and availability targets during a flare.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the prompt does—and does not—settle
The RFP frames a useful systems problem: provide interactive computing from orbit while a remote, unattended surface network handles acquisition, handover, and failures. But it leaves the engineering solution open. Its page says later installments will address planet modeling, orbital trades, constellation geometry, compute placement, radio design, beams, acquisition, and compliance.
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Accordingly, the figures should be read as requirements for proposals, not as a validated design or forecast. The scenario does not independently establish the planet’s climate or radio environment, nor demonstrate that its latency, reliability, and lifetime targets are feasible together. A DEV Community repost credits Sandeep Ahluwalia and notes that the piece originally appeared at EventHelix; it supplies series context rather than independent confirmation of the technical assumptions: An Alien AI’s RFP.
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