I bought this game the day it came out, and I've played it some. It's not my favourite game ever, but anybody reading this knows that Signal Simulator has a certain charm.

So after all that time since game release, only today did I ever think of this. As you play, you control a little remote rover, right? And it beams back what it sees through its camera, right?

You work at a radio dish array that intercepts signals, this is given. So here's my stupid question:

Why would you use a remote-controlled rover when its signal could over-ride the signals you're supposed to be getting from space? It's like trying to have a whispered conversation with your spouse and then you give your in-laws megaphones.

Earlier in the summer, I visited a real radio telescope array in Penticton, BC, Canada. We had to park our car a couple of kilometers away (a mile), and we couldn't bring electronic devices. My analog wristwatch was okay, but my wife's smart watch was not. No phones or digital cameras, either. This was because those devices would create a signal that could mask extraterrestrial signals.

The equipment the site used was old cathode-ray tube monitors and even some vacuum-tube stuff. That's because the emissions are very low from these things. The modern computers and Internet capability was kept in room-sized Faraday cages, and all through the site were these "airlocks" that you needed to go through to get office work done. Crazy, but that's Science for you.