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Datacenters in space aren't going to work

taranis.ie

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Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#111

Post by fwip »

aunty_helen wrote: post #60

I agree with most of this post and think the problems are harder than the proponents are making them seem. But, 1) literally the smartest people and AI in the world will be working on this and 2) man I want to see us get to a type 2 civilisation bad. The layout of this blog post is also very interesting, it presents a bunch of very hard items to solve and funny enough the last has been solved recently with starlink.…

The problem isn't "how to cool the chips", it's "how to cool the whole friggin data center."

Any active cooling solution you can think of actually makes the problem worse (unless it's "eject hot mass").

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#112

Post by wat10000 »

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"

Things on earth also have access to that coldness for about half of each day. How many data centers use radiative cooling into the night sky to supplement their regular cooling? The fact that the answer is “zero” should tell you all you need to know about how useful this is.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#113

Post by RobotToaster »

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…

As someone with only a basic knowledge of space technology, my first thought when I read the idea was "how the hell are they going to cool it".

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#114

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

teeray wrote: post #110
marcellus23 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

not really. Suborbital vehicles achieve orbital heights. It's actually probably easier since you don't need a payload. The velocity alone will do the trick.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#115

Post by thegrim33 »

"[..] deploying a solar array with photovoltaic cells – something essentially equivalent to what I have on the roof of my house here in Ireland, just in space. It works, but it isn't somehow magically better than installing solar panels on the ground – you don't lose that much power through the atmosphere"

As an armchair layman, this claim intuitively doesn't feel very correct.

Of course AI is far from a trustworthy source, but just using it here to get a rough idea of what it thinks about the issue:

"Ground sites average only a few kWh/m²/day compared to ~32.7 kWh/m²/day of continuous, top-of-atmosphere sunlight." .. "continuous exposure (depending on orbit), no weather, and the ability to use high-efficiency cells — all make space solar far denser in delivered energy per m² of panel."

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#116

Post by ahartmetz »

fhars wrote: post #11
ReptileMan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can radiate the excess energy away on the non-sun facing part. In theory.

There are even commercially available prototypes of that vacuum cooling technology, if you want to perform your own experiments with that concept: https://www.amazon.com/Thermos-Stainless-Ounce-Drink-Bottle/...

To be fair, they have mirror surfaces inside. A more realistic prototype would be ultra-black for something like 10-50x better radiative heat transfer. Of course it would still be more like shitty insulation than like good conduction.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#117

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

skybrian wrote: post #70

Google’s paper [1] does talk about radiation hardening and thermal management. Maybe their ideas are naive and it’s a bad paper? I’m not an expert so I couldn’t tell from a brief skim. It does sound to me like other concepts that Google has explored and shelved, like building data centers out of shipping container sized units and building data centers underwater. [1] https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/suncatch…

The only sentence in the whole "paper" about cooling is

> Cooling would be achieved through a thermal system of heat pipes and radiators while operating at nominal temperatures

Which is kind of similar to writing a paper about building a bridge over the Pacific and saying "The bridge would be strong enough by being built out of steel". Like you can say it, but that doesn't magically make it true.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#118

Post by wmf »

skybrian wrote: post #93
creatonez wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't work, it was an utterly terrible idea and they are almost certainly lying about the sentiment that it "worked". No ability to perform maintenance is a complete nonstarter. Communications and power is a nightmare to get right. The thermal management story sucks - just because you have metal touching water doesn't mean you have effective radiation of heat. Actually scaling it up is nearly impossible because y…

Presumably it didn't work well or they wouldn't have shelved it. But do you actually know about what happened or is this all based on your priors?

I don't think MS ever revealed enough information to answer that. For example, I haven't seen any explanation of how heat is transferred from the servers to the skin of the container. I can guess how they did it but I don't want to make any judgement based on guesses.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#119

Post by wmf »

Orbital data centers are very hard but this isn't a good explanation of why. There really is more light in space since certain orbits are always in daylight. Radiators are no larger than the solar panels so if you can build multi square kilometer solar arrays you can probably also build massive radiators.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#120

Post by mbesto »

Datacenters in space is about circumventing nation states masked as ambitions to generate more power.

Follow the rationale:

1. Nation states ultimately control three key infrastructure pieces required to run data centers (a) land (protected by sovereign armed forces) (b) internet / internet infra (c) electricity. If crypto ever became a legitimate threat, nation states could simply seize any one of or all these three and basically negate any use of crypto.

2. So, if you have data centers that no longer rely on power derived from a nation state, land controller by a nation state or connectivity provided by the nation state's cabling infra, then you can always access your currency and assets.

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