How does “passive cooling” work in space?
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Starcloud
51–60 of 325 posts
Re: Starcloud
#52>passive cooling huh? I was under the impression that cooling in space is an absolute nightmare since radiating heat into vacuum is super hard? Even the comparatively small and decidedly H100-free ISS needed giant radiators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Contro...
These two words are a massive red flags, signaling this is nothing more than a giant grift, like most of today's economy.
Re: Starcloud
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's an answer in their whitepaper[0] - see Table 1. tl;dr - power is continuous and free via solar array [0] - https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf
Free in the sense of astronomical capital and operational costs.
r&d sure, not sure about ops as you can probably just detach a faulty module and launch a replacement.
Re: Starcloud
#54Re: Starcloud
#55Re: Starcloud
#56I've been saying for a long time that we should consider remote areas for building datacenters for batch processing. At first I thought the poles (of the planet) might be good. The cooling is basically free. But the energy and internet connectivity would be a problem. At the poles you can really only get solar about three months a year, and even then you need a lot of panels. Most of Antarctica is powered diesel beca…
>But cooling is a huge problem. Space is cold, but there is no medium to transfer the heat away from the hot objects. I think this will be the biggest sticking point, unless they came up with an innovative solution. Their main tech breakthrough would have to be in this area otherwise the company is worthless imo.
I don't think they can bend the laws of physics though. Vacuum means the only way to dissipate heat is through thermal radiation, hence the huge infrared radiators.
Re: Starcloud
#57Their whitepaper (https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf) had a thread last fall:
We should train AI in space [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41478241 - Sept 2024 (93 comments)
A bit more here:
Lumen Orbit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42790424 - Jan 2025 (2 comments)
VCs wanted to get into Lumen Orbit's $11M seed round - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42518284 - Dec 2024 (2 comments)
Re: Starcloud
#58Can this possibly make financial sense even if launch costs were zero? One NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD consumes 10 kW which would be ~500 square feet of solar panels and ~100 square feet of radiator area.
https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/companies/article/th...
> Their design calls for a cluster of shipping container-style boxes packed with high-speed AI chips. These would be anchored at the centre of a 16 sq km array of solar panels generating up to five gigawatts of power — about 25 per cent more than Drax, Britain’s biggest power station. The mammoth structure would circle the Earth in “sun synchronous” orbit so that it is never in shade
Re: Starcloud
#59This doesn't pass the sniff test. Please, show me the napkin math where this remotely adds up.
Re: Starcloud
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
>But cooling is a huge problem. Space is cold, but there is no medium to transfer the heat away from the hot objects. I think this will be the biggest sticking point, unless they came up with an innovative solution. Their main tech breakthrough would have to be in this area otherwise the company is worthless imo.
It's possible to do all of this with current technology. Just... Why? The cost would be exorbitant; even with really clever deployment tech, the launch costs are gonna be dominated by solar panels and radiators. This is a super cool idea and seems like perfect investor-bait. That's about where it ends.
Perhaps a hedge in case apocalyptic scenarios disable or reduce networks on the ground?