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Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

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Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#51

Post by runako »

GolfPopper wrote: post #6
energywut wrote: post #4

Putting a datacenter in space is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while. Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of batteries Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to? Latency? Highly variable. Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible. Radiation shielding? Not free. Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous! Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and kee…

Servers outside any legal jurisdiction. Priceless.

[Mild spoilers for _Critical Mass_ by Daniel Suarez below]

> Servers outside any legal jurisdiction

Others have weighed in on the accuracy of this, with a couple pointing out that the people are still on the ground. There's a thread in _Critical Mass_ by Daniel Suarez that winds up dealing with this issue in a complex set of overlapping ways.

Pretty good stuff, I don't think the book will be as good as the prior book in the series. (I'm only about halfway through.)

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#52

Post by nkrisc »

GolfPopper wrote: post #6
energywut wrote: post #4

Putting a datacenter in space is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while. Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of batteries Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to? Latency? Highly variable. Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible. Radiation shielding? Not free. Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous! Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and kee…

Servers outside any legal jurisdiction. Priceless.

Pretty worthless unless the execs live in space too.

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#53

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

wkat4242 wrote: post #19
energywut wrote: post #4

Putting a datacenter in space is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while. Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of batteries Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to? Latency? Highly variable. Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible. Radiation shielding? Not free. Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous! Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and kee…

Yes cooling is difficult. Half the "solar panels" on the ISS aren't solar panels but heat radiation panels. That's the only way you can get rid of it and it's very inefficient so you need a huge surface.

seems oddly paradoxical. ISS interior at some roughly livable temperature. Exterior is ... freakin' space! Temperature gradient seems as if it should take of it ...

... and then you realize that because it is space, there's almost nothing out there to absorb the heat ...

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#54

Post by throwawaymaths »

energywut wrote: post #4

Putting a datacenter in space is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while. Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of batteries Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to? Latency? Highly variable. Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible. Radiation shielding? Not free. Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous! Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and kee…

reliable energy is the only (maybe valid) reason. you can get yourself into a sun synchronous dawn dusk orbit and avoid shading by the earth.

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#55

Post by quantified »

ggreer wrote: post #49
energywut wrote: post #4

Putting a datacenter in space is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while. Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of batteries Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to? Latency? Highly variable. Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible. Radiation shielding? Not free. Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous! Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and kee…

If you read the Starcloud whitepaper[1], it claims that massive batteries aren't needed because the satellites would be placed in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit. Except for occasional lunar eclipses, the solar panels would be in constant sunlight. The whitepaper also says that they're targeting use cases that don't require low latency or high availability. In short: AI model training and other big offline tasks. F…

Of course, they're soft targets in space war too, they could generate lots of debris.

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#56

Post by throwawaymaths »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #53
wkat4242 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes cooling is difficult. Half the "solar panels" on the ISS aren't solar panels but heat radiation panels. That's the only way you can get rid of it and it's very inefficient so you need a huge surface.

seems oddly paradoxical. ISS interior at some roughly livable temperature. Exterior is ... freakin' space! Temperature gradient seems as if it should take of it ... ... and then you realize that because it is space, there's almost nothing out there to absorb the heat ...

there literally is nothing to absorb the heat. Conduction and convection are out, all you got is radiation.

new vc rule: no investing in space startups unless their founders have 1000 hours in KSP and 500 hours in children of a dead earth

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#57

Post by raverbashing »

ggreer wrote: post #49
energywut wrote: post #4

Putting a datacenter in space is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while. Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of batteries Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to? Latency? Highly variable. Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible. Radiation shielding? Not free. Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous! Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and kee…

If you read the Starcloud whitepaper[1], it claims that massive batteries aren't needed because the satellites would be placed in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit. Except for occasional lunar eclipses, the solar panels would be in constant sunlight. The whitepaper also says that they're targeting use cases that don't require low latency or high availability. In short: AI model training and other big offline tasks. F…

Just another good proof of paper being an ideal medium for fiction

Any purported advantages have to contend with the fact that sending the modules costs millions of dollars. Tens to hundred millions

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#58

Post by hellisothers »

quantified wrote: post #55
ggreer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the Starcloud whitepaper[1], it claims that massive batteries aren't needed because the satellites would be placed in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit. Except for occasional lunar eclipses, the solar panels would be in constant sunlight. The whitepaper also says that they're targeting use cases that don't require low latency or high availability. In short: AI model training and other big offline tasks. F…

Of course, they're soft targets in space war too, they could generate lots of debris.

Man I read “AI training in a high latency self sufficient satellite orbiting earth” as the start of a Sci-Fi novel…

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#59

Post by mandevil »

reaperducer wrote: post #35
christina97 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally though, countries don’t disappear: they have a predecessor and a successor.

A successor may take possession of the land, but that doesn't mean it will also take responsibility for the previous government's liabilities.

That is not how international law works, you don't get to say "we are a new country and therefore not bound by treaties that earlier forms did."

This principle was established when Nazis were convicted for war crimes at Nuremburg for violating treaties that their predecessor state the Weimar Republic signed, even after the Nazi's repudiated those treaties and claimed they were signed by an illegitimate state, and that they were a new Reich, not like the Wiemar Republic.

Basically if territory changes hand to an existing state that state will obviously still have obligations, and if a new state is formed, then generally it is assumed to still carry the obligations of the previous state. There is no "one weird trick" to avoid international law. I assure you that the diplomats and lawyers 80 years ago thought of these possibilities. They saw what resulted from the Soviet and Nazi mutual POW slaughters, and set up international law so no one could ignore it.

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#60

Post by 1970-01-01 »

If I'm reading this correctly, the idea is

1. YOLO. Yeet big data into orbit!

2. People will pay big bucks to keep their data all the way up there!

3. Profit!

It could make sense if the entire DC was designed as a completely modular system. Think ISS without the humans. Every module needs to have a guaranteed lifetime, and then needs to be safely yet destructively deorbited after its replacement (shiny new module) docks and mirrors the data.

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