Datacenters in space aren't going to work
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Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work
#2So many ideas involving AI just seems to be built off of sci-fi (not in a good way), including this one. Like sci-fi, there are little practical considerations made.
Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work
#3“Terrible, horrible, no good” is the new “considered harmful.”
Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work
#4I asked Google for more information about AI datacenter in space. This was the first sentence, 'AI data centers are being developed in space to handle the massive energy demands of AI, using solar power and the vacuum of space for cooling.'
> After laughing at "the vacuum of space for cooling" I closed the page because there was nothing serious there. Basic high school physics student would be laughing at that sentence.
Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work
#5I asked Google for more information about AI datacenter in space. This was the first sentence, 'AI data centers are being developed in space to handle the massive energy demands of AI, using solar power and the vacuum of space for cooling.' > After laughing at "the vacuum of space for cooling" I closed the page because there was nothing serious there. Basic high school physics student would be laughing at that senten…
You can radiate the excess energy away on the non-sun facing part. In theory.
Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work
#6As someone with a similar background to the writer of this post (I did avionics work for NASA before moving into more “traditional” software engineering), this post does a great job at summing up my thoughts on why space-based data centers won’t work. The SEU issues were my first though followed by the thermal concerns, and both are addressed here fantastically.
On the SEU issue I’ll add in that even in LEO you can still get SEUs - the ISS is in LEO and gets SEUs on occasion. There’s also the South Atlantic Anomaly where spacecraft in LEO see a higher number of SEUs.
Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work
#7“Terrible, horrible, no good” is the new “considered harmful.”
Apparently the book whose title the phrase comes from [1] was published in 1972, four years after Dijkstra published "Considered Harmful".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_and_the_Terrible,_Ho...
Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work
#8What about on the Moon? My understanding is that heat is the killer. There you could sink pipes into the surface and use that as a heat sink. There are “peaks of eternal light” near the poles where you could get 24/7 solar power.
Latency becomes high but you send large batches of work.
Probably not at all economical compared to anywhere on Earth but the physics work better than orbit where you need giant heat sinks.
Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work
#9“Terrible, horrible, no good” is the new “considered harmful.”
"Mind-bogglingly poorly thought out to the degree of a cynical money-grubbing scheme worthy of the finest cambodian slave camp" was taken and is disrespectful to the hard work and education of said slave camp's operators.
Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work
#10Regardless of how terrible an idea it is, I wouldn't mind some billionaires funding R&D that advances the state of the art in thermal management in space.