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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

#311

Post by monster_truck »

Robotbeat wrote: post #98
monster_truck wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't going to last for much longer with the way power density projections are looking. Consider that we've been at the point where layers of monitoring & lockout systems are required to ensure no humans get caught in hot spots, which can surpass 100C, for quite some time now.

You mean like every single kitchen?

No, I mean like you crumple to the ground and cook to death if there isn't someone close enough to grab you within a few minutes. 212F ambient air. Like the inside of a meat smoker, but big enough for humans.

DC's aren't quite there yet, but the hot spots that do occur are enough to cause arc flashes which claim hundreds of lives a year.

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

#312

Post by monster_truck »

closewith wrote: post #110
monster_truck wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect they'd stop at automatic rendezvous & docking. Use some sort of cradle system that holds heat fins, power, etc that boxes of racks would slot into. Once they fail just pop em out and let em burn up. Someone else will figure out the landing bit I won't say it's a good idea, but it's a fun way to get rid of e-waste (I envision this as a sort of old persons home for parted out supercomptuers)

Spreading heavy metals in the upper atmosphere. Fun.

Seems like a bit of pointless whataboutism when we're still using leaded fuel in planes and helicopters

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

#313

Post by anon84873628 »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #263
weinzierl wrote: post #138

Why do they want to put a data center in space in the first place? Free cooling? Doesn't make much sense to me. As the article points out the radiators need to me massive. Access to solar energy? Solar is more efficient in space, I'll give them that, but does that really outweigh the whole hassle to put the panels in space in the first place? Physical isolation and security? Against manipulation maybe, but not agains…

One of the answers in OP is > A lot of waste heat is generated running TDCs, which contributes to climate change—so migrating to space would alleviate the toll on Earth’s thermal budget. This seems like a compelling environmental argument. TDCs already consume about 1-1.5% of global electricity and it’s safe to assume that this will only grow in the pursuit of AGI. The comparison here is between solar powered TDCs in…

Apparently the only way to make renewable energy cool is to put it in space

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

#314

Post by anon84873628 »

starik36 wrote: post #262
Brian_K_White wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe SpinLaunch can get it up there. And the power for the SpinLaunch motor can come from Solar Roadways.

There was a video from Scott Manley about this several years back. And he was very skeptical that it's even feasible for SpinLaunch to place something useful into orbit. And they haven't yet.

That's the parent's joke

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

#315

Post by ggreer »

danans wrote: post #193
sailingparrot wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For maintenance, they plan to have a modular architecture that allows upgrading and/or replacing failed/obsolete servers. If launch costs are low enough to allow for launching a datacenter into space, they'll be low enough to allow for launching replacement modules. This is hiding so, so much complexity behind a simple hand wavy “modular”. I have trained large models on thousands of GPUs, hardware failure happen al…

> Whether or not their business is viable depends on the future cost of launches and the future cost of batteries. If batteries get really cheap, it will be economically feasible to have an off-the-grid datacenter on the ground. There's not much point in launching a datacenter into space if you can power it on the ground 24/7 with solar + batteries. Something tells me that the price of batteries is already cheap enou…

The cheapest batteries today are around $100/kWh. Optimistically assuming 12 hours of sunlight per day, a 40MW datacenter would need 480MWh of batteries to cover the dark period, costing $50 million. Realistically you'd need at least 16 hours worth of batteries to cover winter months when the night is longer, raising your battery costs to $65 million. You'd also need ≈5x more solar panels than in space, and these panels would be more expensive due to shielding from weather. 120MW of ground-based solar panels would cost around $100 million.

Assuming the $165M of panels and batteries last for a decade, and there are no maintenance costs, they'll provide 3,504,000MWh over that time for an energy cost of 4.7 cents per kWh. This is competitive with grid power in some places. It also has the advantage of not needing backup generators. But maintenance costs do exist, and it makes more financial sense to buy power as you use it rather than pay upfront.

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

#316

Post by qayxc »

diabeetusman wrote: post #282
hartator wrote: post #251

> There, 24/7 solar power is unhindered by day/night cycles, weather, and atmospheric losses (attenuation). Wouldn’t the earth still get in the way of the sun or it’s too far away?

Normally yes, but the L1 Lagrange point always would have an unobstructed view of the sun. Granted, L1 is a lot further away than LEO (~3x the distance to the moon), so that makes it harder and more expensive to get to

You don't need to go that far. That's what sun-synchronous orbits are for.

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

#317

Post by ianburrell »

neom wrote: post #206
weinzierl wrote: post #138

Why do they want to put a data center in space in the first place? Free cooling? Doesn't make much sense to me. As the article points out the radiators need to me massive. Access to solar energy? Solar is more efficient in space, I'll give them that, but does that really outweigh the whole hassle to put the panels in space in the first place? Physical isolation and security? Against manipulation maybe, but not agains…

I've talked to the founder of Starcloud about this, there is just going to be a lot of data generative stuff in space in the future, and further and further out into space. He thinks now is the right time to learn how to compute up there because people will want to process, and maybe orchestrate processing between many devices, in space. He's fully aware of all of the objections in this hn comments section, he just d…

Earth is the closest spot for most of space. It makes most sense for satellites to send data back to Earth. They would have to find a use where with lots of compute but latency really matters.

For farther out, computer on ships, stations, or bases makes sense, but that is different than free floating satellites. They already have power, cooling, and maintenance.

It is like saying there should be compute in the air for all the airplanes flying around.

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

#318

Post by danans »

ggreer wrote: post #315
danans wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether or not their business is viable depends on the future cost of launches and the future cost of batteries. If batteries get really cheap, it will be economically feasible to have an off-the-grid datacenter on the ground. There's not much point in launching a datacenter into space if you can power it on the ground 24/7 with solar + batteries. Something tells me that the price of batteries is already cheap enou…

The cheapest batteries today are around $100/kWh. Optimistically assuming 12 hours of sunlight per day, a 40MW datacenter would need 480MWh of batteries to cover the dark period, costing $50 million. Realistically you'd need at least 16 hours worth of batteries to cover winter months when the night is longer, raising your battery costs to $65 million. You'd also need ≈5x more solar panels than in space, and these pan…

https://www.wesa.fm/environment-energy/2024-02-19/weirton-fo...

> Optimistically assuming 12 hours of sunlight per day, a 40MW datacenter would need 480MWh of batteries to cover the dark period, costing $50 million.

A 40MW data center doesn't run constantly at 40MW. That's its load rating. Like any industrial facility, actual peak loads are probably around 80% and average loads are lower.

Also, why do you assume that the data center has to be off-grid? That's a constraint of a space-based datacenter, not a ground based datacenter.

Datacenters with storage can complement grid power.

> The cheapest batteries today are around $100/kWh.

If we are comparing ground based data centers to hypothetical space based ones, then consider that grid scale iron air batteries are coming soon at $20/kWh.

https://www.wesa.fm/environment-energy/2024-02-19/weirton-fo...

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

#319

Post by quantified »

hellisothers wrote: post #58
quantified wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Attach that satellite to all the imaging satellites, what's it going to be learning about?

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

#320

Post by ggreer »

danans wrote: post #318
ggreer wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cheapest batteries today are around $100/kWh. Optimistically assuming 12 hours of sunlight per day, a 40MW datacenter would need 480MWh of batteries to cover the dark period, costing $50 million. Realistically you'd need at least 16 hours worth of batteries to cover winter months when the night is longer, raising your battery costs to $65 million. You'd also need ≈5x more solar panels than in space, and these pan…

https://www.wesa.fm/environment-energy/2024-02-19/weirton-fo... > Optimistically assuming 12 hours of sunlight per day, a 40MW datacenter would need 480MWh of batteries to cover the dark period, costing $50 million. A 40MW data center doesn't run constantly at 40MW. That's its load rating. Like any industrial facility, actual peak loads are probably around 80% and average loads are lower. Also, why do you assume that…

You quoted me saying, "There's not much point in launching a datacenter into space if you can power it on the ground 24/7 with solar + batteries." and suggested, "...that the price of batteries is already cheap enough for terrestrial data centers to make more economic sense than launching a datacenter." So I replied with some napkin calculations estimating the cost of powering a datacenter 24/7 with current solar + batteries. You could assume those solar panels and batteries are on the grid, allowing excess capacity to be sold to others, but then you need another $20 million for backup generators.

I assumed the battery + solar setup would need to provide 40MW because while datacenters usually do run below capacity, you'd also want some extra capacity to account for cooling systems, battery/panel degradation, and the fact that for some tasks (such as AI training), you actually do get close to 100% capacity for long periods of time. Feel free to cut my numbers by 20%, but I don't think that would change the bottom line: off-grid datacenters could be cost competitive in some regions, but the upfront costs don't make them worthwhile right now. If battery costs go down (as I hope they will), that will likely change.

An orbital datacenter would not need significant batteries because it would be placed in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit. The panels would only be occluded during solar eclipses, which in low earth orbit last a few seconds. Starcloud is betting that launch costs will plummet but battery costs will not, and that they'll be able to cheaply solve space-specific issues related to cooling, maintenance, and reliability.

If you look at my other comments in this thread, you'll see I predict they will fail. A lot of people are coming to the same conclusion, but for mistaken reasons (eg: thinking that space-based datacenters would need as many batteries as ones on the ground). I'm just trying to correct that.

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