crazy how tiny the servers are compared to the panels
Starcloud
141–150 of 234 posts
Re: Starcloud
#142I have yet to meet a hardware engineer who thinks this is a good idea. I'm REALLY struggling to see benefits.
Re: Starcloud
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I learned something interesting here, thanks. I've never really thought about it so I'd always assumed space = cold so that would be fine.
Space is cold. There are just very little cold molecules to take over the energy from your hot molecules. Here on earth we are surrounded by many molecules, that are not so cold, but colder than us and together they can take a lot of our excess heat energy away.
Yeah, it's totally obvious now that it's been pointed out, I'd just never thought it through properly.
Re: Starcloud
#144Last time these folks were mentioned on HN, there was a lot of skepticism that this is really possible to do. The issue is cooling: in space, you can't rely on convection or conduction to do passive cooling, so you can only radiate away heat. However, the radiator would need to be several kilometers big to provide enough cooling, and obviously launching such a large object into space would therefore eat up any cost s…
Even beyond cooling, just getting all the hardware up there is extremely costly, and for what benefit over ground based DCs? The cooling is the ongoing problem but the cost of lifting it there obliterates all the other problems, IMO.
Re: Starcloud
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
You still keep playing with the numerator. > increase in a risk factor of over 300 Even with a numerator-only view, I suspect it's not fair to characterize the "risk factor" as going up 300x. There's a lot more nuance about orbits in space.
Tell me the nuance then. If people have concerns about Kessler syndrome at the starlink scale then why wouldn't something literally 1000x bigger be even more concerning.
I already did. Your reply/edit merely repeated your prior observation.
Getting back to the point:
You literally claimed that one of these would "inevitabl[y]" trigger a Kessler effect with no proof.
> something literally 1000x bigger be even more concerning.
Again, this isn't convincing if you don't have the denominator/context. Think about it: you still can't answer how many of these are needed to trigger the Kessler effect.
BTW, "increase by a FACTOR of about 300" != "increase in a RISK FACTOR of over 300"
Re: Starcloud
#146One of the selling points they mention is that they won't need to use any fresh water for cooling. My understanding was that water-demands on Earth were an overblown issue and minuscule when compared to other uses of fresh water such as watering one acre of farmland. Not to mention, "used" water is just "warm" water that can then be used again for other purposes. So are they perpetuating a myth here? Or is water use…
Minor correction: the water is evaporated. It remains in the water cycle but is removed from the water source for any downstream users.
Re: Starcloud
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the bigger thing about a space-based data center that it's not on anyone's land, and not easy to inspect or capture. Solar energy available around the clock allows it to be self-sufficient for a long time. I suppose there will be some demand for high-security, high-price setups like that.
Either the satellite is geostationary and doesn't have 24h / 24h sun exposure as energy source. Or they are not geostationary but it also means the datacenter will connect to a different earth base station which means the data access route would change and latency would increase which would be unacceptable for a lot of use cases. You would then need to replicate and synchronise customer data across the different spac…
> Either the satellite is geostationary and doesn't have 24h / 24h sun exposure as energy source.
Due to the Earth's axial tilt [1], geostationary orbits generally have 24 hour sun exposure, except for a few minutes a day around the equinoxes [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt
[2] https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/our-satellites/currently-flying/...
Re: Starcloud
#148Altman: has stake in nuclear power and AI companies Also Altman: Let's build gigawatts of nuclear for AI Musk: has stake in space and AI companies Also Musk: Let's build AI datacenters in space
Starcloud is the concept I'll show my friends that datacenters have hit peak hype. Can't wait for an alien to NIMBY one of these.
This. We really have hit Internet bubble hype levels, this could be a Silicon Valley episode. "My pitch deck is one slide. 'It's AI... IN SPACE!'"
Re: Starcloud
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why can't it be geostationary? Laser communication can get you gigabit speeds today. That would take a month to transmit GPT-5's estimated 280TB training corpus, which is acceptable. Latency does not matter.
With geostationary orbit you won't ever get less than 200ms round-trip latency from the ground (at the speed of light). Fine for some applications, but a massive regression from modern fiber infrastructure and definitely not suitable for everything (just think how slow the modern web is even with 15ms connections to datacenters). There's a reason why Starlink & co are trying to set up communication satellites closer…
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Re: Starcloud
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Starcloud is the concept I'll show my friends that datacenters have hit peak hype. Can't wait for an alien to NIMBY one of these.
This. We really have hit Internet bubble hype levels, this could be a Silicon Valley episode. "My pitch deck is one slide. 'It's AI... IN SPACE!'"
The banker slide with checkboxes will be compelling:
[x] no permitting, cultural, wildlife
[x] no local opposition.
[x] site control
Unfortunately, this is balance sheet financing so big boys only.