R2I Protocol · Robot-to-Infrastructure
It operates light-minutes away, through intermittent communication windows, with no continuous connection to any authority. The same signed protocol — identity, authorization, evidence — validated locally and reconciled when the link returns.
Today every spacecraft, every satellite and every platform speaks its own, and each pair of operators negotiates its own integration. URBANODE is the protocol by which any of them identifies itself, requests what it needs and leaves signed proof of what happened — without carrying the signal or governing the antenna: the authorization layer sits above the link, whatever the link is.
Servicing spacecraft, tugs and cargo vehicles that request berthing, power or data from platforms they did not build. Satellites that identify themselves to the ground segment and to other operators. Rovers and surface construction units, at charging points, depots and habitat perimeters. Robots inside the modules, with the node — not the robot — as the final authority. Each one with a verifiable identity and a scoped permission for every piece of infrastructure it touches.
The operator has the same problem as a colocation facility on the ground — proving, customer by customer, who accessed and who intervened — with one difference: it cannot depend on a live link. Ground segment and orbital node, under the same protocol.
Before it is a city it is a network of nodes — airlocks, depots, power, charging — used by machines belonging to many operators. One identity per agent, one permission matrix per node, a signed record of everything that happened, whether or not Earth was listening.
Life-support control, airlock interlocks, safety stops, flight and docking control. Nor the communications link: the satellite synchronizes, it does not decide. A civil programme, for the peaceful use of outer space.