Product design question

Design a system that transfers large quantities of data from Earth to a different planet.

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Tests systems design under extreme physical constraints, like latency and intermittent connectivity, unlike typical networking problems.

Clarify the use case: continuous science-data streaming versus periodic large-batch transfer.
Identify the core constraint: massive latency makes real-time handshake protocols like TCP impractical.
Design around a disruption-tolerant approach: store-and-forward relay nodes that forward data as links open up.
Prioritize data by criticality: safety telemetry sent first, bulk data queued and sent opportunistically.
Add redundancy: error-correction coding to handle likely transmission errors without costly full retransmission.
Define success as the percentage of prioritized data delivered within its required window, plus total throughput.

Recognizes standard low-latency protocols don't work here and reaches for a disruption-tolerant model.
Prioritizes data by criticality instead of treating all data equally under constrained bandwidth.
Adds error-resilience appropriate for long, lossy links instead of assuming reliable delivery.

Designing this like a standard low-latency internet protocol, ignoring the delay constraint.
No prioritization scheme for what data gets sent first.

Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.