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Starcloud

ycombinator.com

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Re: Starcloud

#161

Post by echoangle »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #143
echoangle wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The radiators on the ISS aren’t passive though, they have actively pumped fluid loops to get heat from the hot parts into the radiators.

That's interesting to know. But since it's space, how do they then cool down the hot fluid?

You cool the fluid by flowing it through the radiator. The radiator emits heat radiation into space and cools down the fluid. As long as the fluid is hotter than the equilibrium temperature of the radiator (determined by radiator, space and sun radiation), it will emit more energy than it receives and cool down the fluid.

Re: Starcloud

#162

Post by troymc »

It might make more sense to put data centers on the Moon.

It's fairly close, about 1.3 light seconds away. You wouldn't use it for anything realtime, but it would be fine for long AI training jobs.

You could bury the servers underground to shield them from cosmic rays. That would also be good for any people living there.

You could get power from solar panels on peaks near the poles that get light almost all the time. For example, some ridges around Shackleton Crater are sunlit up to ~90% of the time, with short periods of darkness. Use batteries to smooth out the power supply.

For heating and cooling, just use the standard techniques. It's not easy, but it's a solved problem. As a bonus, near the poles, the temperature extremes aren't as bad as at the equator.

You could also sell tickets to tourists. People will pay to see the darndest things.

Re: Starcloud

#163

Post by BirAdam »

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…

Yeah, it would make more sense to put some DCs in Patagonia.

Re: Starcloud

#164

Post by 9991 »

rozap wrote: post #102
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…

Either this is performance art, or interest rates are too low.

Or it's a cover for putting something else up in orbit secretly.

Re: Starcloud

#165

Post by godelski »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #88

I'm not an engineer, so maybe I'm wrong, but isn't cooling famously difficult in space?

Yes.

Also, so is heating.

When you're on the sun side, everything is too hot and it is hard to cool. You can do direct cooling, such as water cooling, but you have no radiator to dump the heat to...

When you're in the shadow of the sun you have the opposite problem. Things are way too cold. Cold enough normal electronics can fail.

For reference, the ISS can fluctuate between -250F and 250F.

I'm willing to bet that it is easier to deal with the issues of salt water than it is to deal with the heating and cooling issues combined with difficulty to manually access problems presented by space. Price per pound into orbit is still quite expensive...

Re: Starcloud

#166

Post by xnx »

echoangle wrote: post #155
vermilingua wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given Y Combinator's vetting process… The vetting process of the fund that quite famously invests in the founders over the idea?

I hope that’s what’s going on here. They can’t seriously fund something like this and expect anything close to the pitched output. But I also wouldn’t fund the founders here because they have to be incompetent or grifting. I seriously don’t see any other way, it’s that ridiculous.

> the founders here because they have to be incompetent or grifting

Bold grift may be what they're selecting for

Re: Starcloud

#167

Post by Retr0id »

postalrat wrote: post #67
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…

Where do I buy some of these 12 month old obsolete GPUs?

eBay works for me

Re: Starcloud

#170

Post by conn10mfan »

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.

the private sector made it to the moon 56 years after the public sector

it's going to take the management of our shared resources and spaces (orbit) for instance to leave earth, and this becomes especially important as Kessler syndrome risk rises with increasing debris in orbit

private companies launching without public oversight and controls are a recipe for cluttering earth's orbit and leaving us earth-bound for far into the future (same if the public sector launches without care but that seems less likely imo)

Kessler Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

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