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Starcloud

blogs.nvidia.com

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Re: Starcloud

#151

Post by pavon »

amelius wrote: post #86
Gravityloss wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By my back of the envelope calculations, the radiators would be comparable to the solar arrays, probably somewhat smaller and not massively bigger at least.

Care to share them?

In addition to the math, you can also look at existing examples, like how large the ISS radiators need to be relative to its solar panels. Like this project, it is essentially a closed system where all power generated by the solar panels will eventually be converted to heat that needs to be dissipated.

I'm skeptical that it makes any economic sense to put a datacenter in orbit, but the focus on the radiators in the last discussion was odd - if you can make the power generation work, you can make the heat dissipation work.

Re: Starcloud

#153

Post by Klemoniono »

I want that type of money for playing out something which can be pre calculated and is just not a smart idea at the moment at all.

I don't get it. I really don't.

You can calculate the minimum cost, you can calculate heat, maintenance and probably also the expected failerrate for the hardware.

But even if the failerrate is something you need to figure out, that would probably some R&D thing which you would test and verify in a very small and cheap setup.

Same stupid shit with the mirror in space which will send sun back to some PV panels on earth.

Cool stuff in a non capitalistic system but otherwise it just shows that plenty of people have too much money to invest in weird things without understanding it at all.

Re: Starcloud

#154

Post by dabluecaboose »

Reubend wrote: post #3

Last 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…

Maybe this is reductive, but there are times that I'm concerned the only thing keeping me from getting gobs and gobs of startup funds are the facts that I understand basic principles of engineering in space.

I could be wrong and this will be a slam dunk. To me, however, the costs/complexity (Cooling, SRP perturbation, stationkeeping, rendezvous, etc.) far outweigh the benefits of the Cheap as Free (tm) solar power

Re: Starcloud

#155

Post by Klemoniono »

btw. this is dishonest regarding sustainability.

Water consumption of a data center is not a real thing. You don't just consume water. You need it to move heat and you don't need it to remove heat by vaporization.

You can easily use this heat if you actually wanted to do so by heating houses close by or for chemical processes.

Its a legal issue.

And its very resource heavy to put anything in space...

Re: Starcloud

#156

Post by bilekas »

> “In space, you get almost unlimited, low-cost renewable energy,”

Wouldn't you know, you COULD get the same energy here too.

Re: Starcloud

#157

Post by gs17 »

stuff4ben wrote: post #112
Reubend wrote: post #3

Last 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…

If the Mass Effect games have taught me anything, it's that heat dissipation in outer space is hard.

They taught me that Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. Which is probably something else these space data centers will struggle against, it'll be interesting to see how much shielding they have against impacts. There was a Soyuz that had a coolant leak blamed on a micrometeorite strike.

Re: Starcloud

#158

Post by Ekaros »

skywhopper wrote: post #106
nine_k wrote: post #60

Earlier 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.

Once it’s easy enough to launch the hundreds of launches it would take to build one of these, it will also be trivial to launch a drone that can physically attach and attack them. This is the opposite of a secure facility.

Makes you think. Could some rich enough rogue operator attack such data centre to for example cause stock crash and then profit more from that than the cost of mission?

Re: Starcloud

#159

Post by mickeyfrac »

burnte wrote: post #144
Reubend wrote: post #3

Last 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.

Space X thinks they will reduce the cost by 90% with Starship, so they are probably calculating off that.

Re: Starcloud

#160

Post by pipe01 »

torginus wrote: post #93

Altman: 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

This isn't a musk idea though, is it?
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