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Datacenters in space aren't going to work

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Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#101

Post by moomoo11 »

awei wrote: post #15

The one thing that space has going for itself is space. You could have way bigger datacenters than on Earth and just leave them there, assuming Starship makes it cheap enough to get them there. I think it would maybe make sense if 2 things: - We are sure we will need a lot of gpus for the next 30-40 years. - We can make the solar panels + cooling + GPUs have a great life expectancy, so that we can just leave them up…

Why does what it powers matter? As long as it can power something.

The obsolete stuff can be deorbited or recycled in space.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#102

Post by sollewitt »

cuuupid wrote: post #20

I don't agree with the logic that "something is hard/can't be done right now" is equivalent to "this is a terrible idea and won't work." There are dozens of companies solving each problem outlined here; if we never attempt the 'hard' thing we will never progress. The author could have easily taken a tone of 'these are all the things that are hard that we will need to solve first' but actively chose to take the 'catas…

It's not that it's hard, it's that it's stupid - it's based on a misunderstanding of the physics involved which completely negates any of the benefits.

It's the opposite of engineering, where you understand a problem space and then try to determine the optimal solution given the constraints. This starts with an assumption that the solution is correct, and then tries to engineer fixes to gaps in the solution, without ever reevaluating the solution choice.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#103

Post by andrewflnr »

foobarian wrote: post #69
kevdev wrote: post #6

As 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 s…

The only advantage I can come up with is the background temperature being much colder than Earth surface. If you ignored the capex cost to get this launched and running in orbit, could the cooling cost be smaller? Maybe that's the gimmick being used to sell the idea. "Yes it costs more upfront but then the 40% cooling bill goes away... breakeven in X years"

This question is thoroughly covered in the linked article.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#104

Post by denkmoon »

cuuupid wrote: post #20

I don't agree with the logic that "something is hard/can't be done right now" is equivalent to "this is a terrible idea and won't work." There are dozens of companies solving each problem outlined here; if we never attempt the 'hard' thing we will never progress. The author could have easily taken a tone of 'these are all the things that are hard that we will need to solve first' but actively chose to take the 'catas…

Unless thermodynamics suddenly changes, how exactly is the cooling problem being solved? Yeeting hot chunks of matter out the back? On a planetary body you have an entire massive system of matter to reject your heat into. In space, you have nothing.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#105

Post by skywhopper »

0_____0 wrote: post #25
cactusfrog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have tons of space on earth. Cooling in space would be so expensive.

Falcon heavy is only $1,500/kg to LEO. This rate is considerably undercut here on Earth by me, a weasley little nerd, who will move a kilogram in exchange for a pat on the head (if your praise is desirable) or up to tens of dollars (if it isn't).

In exchange for what benefit? There is literally no benefit to having a datacenter in space.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#106

Post by noselasd »

foobarian wrote: post #69
kevdev wrote: post #6

As 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 s…

The only advantage I can come up with is the background temperature being much colder than Earth surface. If you ignored the capex cost to get this launched and running in orbit, could the cooling cost be smaller? Maybe that's the gimmick being used to sell the idea. "Yes it costs more upfront but then the 40% cooling bill goes away... breakeven in X years"

Is it an advantage though ? One of the main objections in the article is exactly that.

There's no atmosphere that helps with heat loss through convection, there's nowhere to shed heat through conduction, all you have is radiation. It is a serious engineering challenge for spacecrafts to getting rid of the little heat they generate, and avoid being overheated by the sun.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#107

Post by ianburrell »

more_corn wrote: post #75

Except you don’t build a data center, you add a GPU to an individual starlink node. If you can do that a couple hundred or thousand times you’ve got a lot of compute in space. The next question is how would you redesign compute around your distributed power and cooling profiles? The article doesn’t talk about the actual engineering challenges. (Such as scaling down the radiative cooling design, matching compute node…

OpenAI has over 1 million GPU.

Starlink satellites would be pointless for doing computation because they are spread across the Earth resulting in horrible latency. AI companies spend lots of money on super fast connects within a datacenter.

Starlink with GPU might have some advantage for running edge GPU. But most Starlink customers are close to ground station and it makes a lot more sense to have GPUs there. It is a lot easier to manage them than launching new satellites which could take years.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#108

Post by skywhopper »

whoisthemachine wrote: post #49

None of these problems seem intractable, just really hard and probably not being solved soon, but one has to start somewhere... so at least the billionaires will fund some scientists and engineers who will do that work?

But for what benefit?

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#109

Post by jcranmer »

foobarian wrote: post #69
kevdev wrote: post #6

As 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 s…

The only advantage I can come up with is the background temperature being much colder than Earth surface. If you ignored the capex cost to get this launched and running in orbit, could the cooling cost be smaller? Maybe that's the gimmick being used to sell the idea. "Yes it costs more upfront but then the 40% cooling bill goes away... breakeven in X years"

Strictly speaking, the thermosphere is actually much warmer than the atmosphere we experience--on the order of 100's or even a 1000 degrees Celsius, if you're measuring by temperature (the average kinetic energy of molecules). However, since particle density is so low, the number of molecules is quite low, and so total heat content of the thermosphere is low. But since particle count is low, conduction and convection are essentially nonexistent, which means cooling needs to rely entirely on radiation, which is much less efficient than other modes at cooling.

In other words, a) background temperature (to the extent it's even meaningful) is much warmer than Earth's surface and b) cooling is much, much more difficult than on Earth.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#110

Post by teeray »

marcellus23 wrote: post #86
vintermann wrote: post #39

Always remember the magic words: dual use technology. The people pushing these aren't saying to you that they want to build data centers in space because conventional data centers are at huge risk of getting bombed by foreign nations or eventually getting smashed by angry mobs. But you can bet they're saying that to the people with the dual-use technology money bag. Or even better, let them draw that conclusion thems…

What makes an orbital facility at less risk of getting bombed?

Probably needs more delta-v to match orbit than a suborbital ICBM would. Not less risk—just more expensive. Depends how valuable the target is.
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