Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starcloud

ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 325 posts

Re: Starcloud

#131

Post by debatem1 »

slashdev wrote: post #112
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 agree, this is makes no sense at all. Can I take the other side of this investment? Like an angel funding round, but selling short?

If you figure out how to do this I will invest in your fund.

Re: Starcloud

#132

Post by aunetx »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #109
arp242 wrote: post #100

Reading the paper this sounds like space Theranos. If they start producing results then I'd double check to make sure it's not just calculated on regular data centres and that they're just pretending its from their space stations. Aside from the technical concerns already raised in other comments, I'm also not sure we really want all this private for-profit usage of earth's orbit. The orbital environment is already s…

Private use of previous public resources has had mixed success, but it feels like leaving space to the public sector will doom us to being Terran bound forever.

I don't see the problem in that to be honest... Especially if the other solution would be allowing private companies to take over our (shared) orbit, meteorites, and -- continuing the trend -- planets for themselves to profit. If it seems overly pessimistic, we can just look at how our own planet's ressources are shared...

Re: Starcloud

#133

Post by alfiedotwtf »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #110
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…

Obviously use the heat pumps to concentrate the thermal energy up to 2700k, then conduct it along a bunch of tungsten filaments, now it's the world's biggest incandescent lightbulb on top of being the first datacenter in space. Maybe get it up to 4000k for a more modern lighting look. Guess we're gonna assume the dark forest hypothesis is false.

Could they concentrate the energy and beam it down to earth as a source for electricity generation on the ground?

Re: Starcloud

#134

Post by gbear605 »

Townley wrote: post #30

It sounds like their vision for space-based data centers presupposes nearly-free energy costs, delivered via a colossal solar farm made possible by falling launch costs. Temporarily putting aside (extremely fair) feasibility questions around those two pre-requisites, data centers are a not-bad choice for things to do with unlimited space energy. Aluminum smelting or growing food are the two I’d think of otherwise, an…

Solar energy isn’t that much more efficient in Earth orbit than on Earth - maybe twice as efficient. That sounds nice, but you’re saving half of your solar panel cost while massively increasing every other cost.

Re: Starcloud

#135

Post by amelius »

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…

Read the "Thermal Management" section, page 8 ...

Re: Starcloud

#136

Post by BonoboIO »

ianhowson wrote: post #41

I had a good laugh. - You can't build 40MW of solar panels for $2M, even with theoretical maximum efficiency. You can't even build the cabling and regulators at that price. - You need battery storage -- not as your backup -- but as primary source. It is going to cost more than $2M. Batteries are heavy. They are going to cost a lot to launch. This is not even solved on the ground yet. - You need a heat transport mediu…

Good point, Rad shielding … how even trust your calculations when everything is grilled by charged particles.

Re: Starcloud

#138

Post by alfiedotwtf »

ianhowson wrote: post #41

I had a good laugh. - You can't build 40MW of solar panels for $2M, even with theoretical maximum efficiency. You can't even build the cabling and regulators at that price. - You need battery storage -- not as your backup -- but as primary source. It is going to cost more than $2M. Batteries are heavy. They are going to cost a lot to launch. This is not even solved on the ground yet. - You need a heat transport mediu…

Most comments on this page are about the problem with heat. You're saying the problem is battery storage.

... couldn't you just merge both problems into a solution - your radiators ARE you power source

Re: Starcloud

#139

Post by arp242 »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #109
arp242 wrote: post #100

Reading the paper this sounds like space Theranos. If they start producing results then I'd double check to make sure it's not just calculated on regular data centres and that they're just pretending its from their space stations. Aside from the technical concerns already raised in other comments, I'm also not sure we really want all this private for-profit usage of earth's orbit. The orbital environment is already s…

Private use of previous public resources has had mixed success, but it feels like leaving space to the public sector will doom us to being Terran bound forever.

I don't know what the best solution is to be honest, but a wild west where improbable VC-funded nonsense is flung in to orbit isn't it. Leaving it only to the public sector is the other extreme end of course, and I'm not advocating for that either.

Re: Starcloud

#140

Post by jsheard »

ekianjo wrote: post #119
jsheard wrote: post #28

Aside from the obvious cooling issues people have already mentioned, isn't cosmic radiation also very unkind to modern ultra dense silicon? AIUI they tend to use really old silicon processes in space stuff for that reason, and even then they have to build in redundant compute to mitigate logic errors that probably wouldn't happen on Earth.

Does SpaceX also use old silicon for Starlink and other projects?

I believe they use relatively modern silicon in Starlink, but the nature of a constellation gives them a lot of wiggle room to route around failures.
Post reply on HN