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Starcloud

ycombinator.com

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Re: Starcloud

#121

Post by jrflowers »

Invictus0 wrote: post #82
dfabulich wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their whitepaper explains their cooling "solution": https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf > As conduction and convection to the environment are not available in space, this means the data center will require radiators capable of radiatively dissipating gigawatts of thermal load. To achieve this, Starcloud is developing a lightweight deployable radiator design with a very large area - by far the largest radiators depl…

I don't get it--are the founders just grifters? How did this startup even make it off the drawing board?

It’s only a grift if they know they can’t solve the cooling issue and they falsify data around their proposed solution and they publicly embarrass their investors a la Theranos.

Outside of that, accepting money and saying “I will simply solve the enormous problem with my idea by solving it” is not only normal, but actively encouraged and rewarded in the VC sphere. Suggesting that that way of operating is anything short of the standard that should be aspired to is actually seen as derisive and offensive on here and can get you labeled as gauche or combative.

Re: Starcloud

#122

Post by ekianjo »

thrance wrote: post #50
justanotheratom wrote: post #3

wow, one year back, I had made a prediction to a friend that this is the direction that Starlink will head in. I was thinking it would proceed like this: 1. provide internet. 2. provide CDN. 3. Edge Compute. 4. Full-on cloud. These guys see to be focussing on what is basically offline processing (AI training).

More like, these guys will be focused on parting VCs from their money. Datacenters in space makes no sense at all. Even ignoring the huge cost of sending hardware there in the first place, cooling is a massive issue in space. No medium to sink heat into means the only way to cool anything is by running water through giant infrared radiators. Not ideal when cooling is the largest bottleneck in scaling datacenters. Not…

> Also disregard the cost it takes to send a technician for maintenance, of updating hardware, etc.

This won't happen. If a satellite fails they will just write it off. Maintenance would be more expensive than depreciation

Re: Starcloud

#123

Post by gbear605 »

bongodongobob wrote: post #83
ziofill wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but if the only energy they get is coming from the sun, then they only need to dissipate that same amount of heat (minus whatever energy was needed for beaming data down to Earth).

What you're missing is that you'd have a huge solar array that powers something much smaller, so that energy gets concentrated into a small area.

That’s not how it works. With conservation of energy, all the energy coming in to power the computers has to be emitted somehow. Powering computers doesn’t get rid of the energy, it just makes it unusable and converts it into heat.

Re: Starcloud

#124

Post by BonoboIO »

This has to be one of the dumbest ideas I've seen posted here.

Just think about the sheer effort required to dump 1 BILLION watts of waste heat into space - the engineering challenges alone make this completely impractical.

Compared to this, Theranos actually looks like a solid investment. At least Holmes had working demos and big-name backers before it all fell apart. This doesn't even pass the basic smell test.

Re: Starcloud

#125

Post by semi-extrinsic »

transpute wrote: post #58
xnx wrote: post #15

Can 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” orbi…

Their whitepaper clearly demonstrates a profound lack of knowledge of thermal engineering. E.g. heat pumps are described as magical things.

They are literally planning to feed the radiators using a coolant like water and sensible heat at 35 degC to 5 degC. At 5 GW, you then need to be pumping 60 000 liters of water per second.

That's like a tenth of the Sacramento river, going through a 16 sq km array in space and hoping that nothing leaks.

Re: Starcloud

#126

Post by 38 »

jedberg wrote: post #25

I'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…

> At first I thought the poles (of the planet) might be good. The cooling is basically free.

Yes, let's go ahead and finish melting the ice caps, great idea

Re: Starcloud

#127

Post by esperent »

echoangle wrote: post #103

I’m still not sure how people can believe this, this makes zero sense to me. There is no easy passive cooling in space, getting rid of heat is a major problem. And you need more redundancy because the radiation will crash your computers. And launch is very expensive of course. And the whole presentation is completely ludicrous. Look at table 1 in the linked PDF and tell me you’re serious. There is no additional cost…

> There is no easy passive cooling in space, getting rid of heat is a major problem

Nonetheless getting rid of heat (by radiation) is possible, otherwise people would be roasted inside the ISS.

I'm sure all of these companies are advertising "ChatGPT in Space!" because that's what will generate hype and money, but what they'll actually be planning is very small edge data centers whose job is to reduce latency.

Whether that makes financial sense, I have no idea. But I am sure it's at least physically possible for a small enough data center.

Re: Starcloud

#128

Post by ryandamm »

All these comments are acting like this is a major problem with VCs in general.

Is this not a major problem with YC, specifically? Our beloved orange site funded and accelerated these guys.

Re: Starcloud

#129

Post by alfiedotwtf »

echoangle wrote: post #103

I’m still not sure how people can believe this, this makes zero sense to me. There is no easy passive cooling in space, getting rid of heat is a major problem. And you need more redundancy because the radiation will crash your computers. And launch is very expensive of course. And the whole presentation is completely ludicrous. Look at table 1 in the linked PDF and tell me you’re serious. There is no additional cost…

I got to the comma in the first sentence from the webpage and immediately went to the comments because I had the exact same thought.

Given Y Combinator's vetting process, I'm sure they would have tackled this problem somehow - maybe by feeding the heat into another process? It will be interesting to see how they've solved this.

Re: Starcloud

#130

Post by zamalek »

dilyevsky wrote: post #16
zamalek wrote: post #5

What does space give us that Earth does not in this scenario? Free real estate? They only mention falling costs for deployment.

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

Power in needs to equal heat out, and that isn't easy in space. They, deceptively, claim that their novel solution is radiative cooling. Relying on radiation for cooling in space is the problem statement! Convective (as on Earth) is significantly more effective.

I'm not one of those idiots who would claim that "we should focus on terrestrial problems instead of space," but this idea seems to have only downsides.

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