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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

#111

Post by littlestymaar »

protocolture wrote: post #80
protocolture wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Microsoft do any of that with their submersible tests? My feeling is that, a bit like starlink, you would just deprecate failed hardware, rather than bother with all the moving parts to replace faulty ram. Does mean your comms and OOB tools need to be better than the average american colo provider but I would hope that would be a given.

>The mass analysis also doesn't appear to include the massive number of heat pipes you would need to transfer the heat from the chips to the radiators. For an orbiting datacenter, that would probably be the single biggest mass allocation. And once you remove all the moving parts, you just fill the whole thing with oil rather than air and let heat transfer more smoothly to the radiators.

First, oil is much heavier than air.

Second: you still need radiators to dissipate heat that is in oil somehow.

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

#112

Post by sagarm »

protocolture wrote: post #80
protocolture wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Microsoft do any of that with their submersible tests? My feeling is that, a bit like starlink, you would just deprecate failed hardware, rather than bother with all the moving parts to replace faulty ram. Does mean your comms and OOB tools need to be better than the average american colo provider but I would hope that would be a given.

>The mass analysis also doesn't appear to include the massive number of heat pipes you would need to transfer the heat from the chips to the radiators. For an orbiting datacenter, that would probably be the single biggest mass allocation. And once you remove all the moving parts, you just fill the whole thing with oil rather than air and let heat transfer more smoothly to the radiators.

Does using oil solve the mass problem? Liquids aren't light.

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

#113

Post by littlestymaar »

Robotbeat wrote: post #96
hamburglar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems prudent to achieve fully robotic datacenters on earth before doing it in space. I know, I’m a real wet blanket.

If mass is going to be as cheap as is needed for this to work anyway, there's no reason you can't just use people like in a normal datacenter.

Space is very bad for the human body, you wouldn't be able to leave the humans there waiting for something to happen like you do on earth, they'd need to be sent from earth every time.

Also, making something suitable for humans means having lots of empty space where the human can walk around (or float around, rather, since we're talking about space).

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

#115

Post by littlestymaar »

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…

> There's no upside, it's only downsides as far as I can tell.

It's outside of any jurisdiction, this is a dream come true for a libertarian oligarch.

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

#116

Post by protocolture »

sagarm wrote: post #112
protocolture wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The mass analysis also doesn't appear to include the massive number of heat pipes you would need to transfer the heat from the chips to the radiators. For an orbiting datacenter, that would probably be the single biggest mass allocation. And once you remove all the moving parts, you just fill the whole thing with oil rather than air and let heat transfer more smoothly to the radiators.

Does using oil solve the mass problem? Liquids aren't light.

I would wager that its lighter than:

Repair robots

Enough air between servers to allow robots to access and replace componentry.

Spare componentry.

An eject/return system.

Heatpipes from every server to the radiators.

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

#117

Post by mschuster91 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #115
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…

> There's no upside, it's only downsides as far as I can tell. It's outside of any jurisdiction, this is a dream come true for a libertarian oligarch.

It's not, all objects in space fall under the jurisdiction of the country that launched the rocket.

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

#118

Post by Nevermark »

darth_avocado wrote: post #64
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…

Let me alert all the NIMBY folks, let them know that data centers will be blocking their view of the moon and casting shadows on their backyards.

Just give all those astronomers mockup telescopes with little screens creating the fancy images they want inside them.

They will calm down.

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

#119

Post by Nevermark »

MarkusQ wrote: post #33
fsh wrote: post #5

[flagged]

Recently had a conversation of space based solar power pros and cons screech to a halt when someone said "Well what about space based geothermal?"

What's the issue? If we can beam power down, we can beam it up!

More realistically, just drop a thermally conductive cable down to low solar orbit. Absolutely unlimited.

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