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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

#281

Post by themgt »

zbentley wrote: post #265
cladopa wrote: post #258

It is not a good idea listening to experts tell you what can't be done. Science and technology progresses one funeral at at time. Einstein's ideas were crazy for classical scientists and Heisenberg's for Einstein. The most important thing is making space access ten to one hundred times cheaper with reusable rockets. Then a lot of the problems in the article will not be problems at all. E.g ISS was designed and create…

Selection bias. Science is very very very rarely disrupted by a small group of visionaries in the same way business or technology are. Substitute “perpetual motion machines” for “datacenters in space”. For very Heisenberg and Einstein there are thousands of crackpots who wasted huge amounts of (often other people’s) money trying to build perpetual motion machines. None of them were remembered. The overwhelming majori…

Substitute “perpetual motion machines” for “datacenters in space”.

This is an absurd strawman. A datacenter in space doesn't violate any fundamental physical laws. Science would not be "disrupted" if engineers made it economically feasible for certain use-cases.

It's totally reasonable to doubt that e.g. >1% of Vera Rubins are going to wind up deployed in space, but fundamentally this is a discussion about large profitable companies investing in (one possible) future of business and technology, not a small group of crackpot visionaries intending to upend physics.

Starlink sounded fairly nuts when it was first proposed, but now there's thousands of routers in space.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#282

Post by mr_toad »

abalone wrote: post #212

I am skeptical as well BUT on the cooling question, which is one of the main concerns we all seem to have, the article is doing a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison between the ISS and a cluster of small satellites. It cites the ISS's centralized 16kW cooling system which is for a big space station that needs to collect and shunt heat over a relatively large area. The Suncatcher prototype is puny in comparison: j…

Some of the proposals are much much bigger than this. Five GW, and 16 square kilometres.

It’s amusing that the article points out how large the radiators will have to be, when the proposals already include building giant radiators. Or that the satellites will have to be vastly larger than the ISS; surprise, surprise, that’s also part of the plan.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#283

Post by wat10000 »

ACCount37 wrote: post #218
collinmcnulty wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think GP's point is that an advanced nation-state could just as easily shoot down an orbiting data center as an oceanic data center and that "international space" offers an equally flimsy defense as "international waters" but a much larger price.

Antisatellite weapons are expensive and rare, and also woefully inadequate for dealing with megaconstellations. If there's one large orbital datacenter, then sure, ASAT is a threat to it. But if it's a dispersed swarm like the Starlink system? Good luck making a dent in that. You'd run out of ASAT long before Musk runs out of Starlink.

Blow up the ground stations. Or the CEO.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#284

Post by wat10000 »

foobarian wrote: post #153
skywhopper wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the cooling cost wouldn’t be smaller. There’s no good way to eliminate the waste heat into space. It’s actually far far harder to radiate the waste heat into space directly than it would be to get rid of it on Earth.

I don't know about that. Look at where the power goes in a typical data center, for a 10MW DC you might spend 2MW just to blow air around. A radiating cooler in space would almost eliminate that. The problem is the initial investment is probably impractical.

How do you propose to get 10MW of heat from the computers out to the radiators?

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#285

Post by mangecoeur »

cladopa wrote: post #258

It is not a good idea listening to experts tell you what can't be done. Science and technology progresses one funeral at at time. Einstein's ideas were crazy for classical scientists and Heisenberg's for Einstein. The most important thing is making space access ten to one hundred times cheaper with reusable rockets. Then a lot of the problems in the article will not be problems at all. E.g ISS was designed and create…

The idea that science progresses by lone wolf geniuses disrupting the status quo is simply false. It makes a good story for low budget documentaries, but it is basically never true.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#286

Post by tsimionescu »

ACCount37 wrote: post #255
verzali wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need to destroy a few. Then you have a cloud of debris that will take down the rest or at the very least force them to use all their fuel making evasive manoeuvres.

Not really. Space is too large.

On the contrary, orbital positions are quite limited. And space debris is already a large issue.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#287

Post by mjhay »

gaigalas wrote: post #251

You don't need massive datacenters in space. You literally just need to be in space, because no typical laws apply if you are there. That little detail outweights all sorts of costs. So, yeah. There will be datacenters in space. Probably unlike any on the ground. Smaller, very likely not running typical datacenter stuff, weirder, operating on a different set of regulations. If we're lucky, it will be like Antarctica…

There’s laws in space. Specifically, those of the country (or country of the subject) that launched the satellite.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#288

Post by mr_toad »

KaiserPro wrote: post #245
jillesvangurp wrote: post #227

There are lots of reasons why keeping data centers on the ground might be cheaper but the article seems to be skipping over a few things. 1) ISS is about 30 years old. It's hardly the state of the art in solar technology. Also, it's much easier to get light to solar panels far a larger part of the time. Permanently in some orbits. And of course there is 0% chance of clouds or other obstructions. 2) We'll have Starshi…

1) ISS is about 30 years old. It's hardly the state of the art in solar technology. Domestic solar panels are heavy, and dont need to deal with hypersonic sand blasting. even at that height, you are in shadow every 90 minutes. > 3) The article complains about lack of bandwidth. Star Link serves millions of customers with high speed, low latency internet via thousands of satellites. Right. First power and heat are a m…

> even at that height, you are in shadow every 90 minutes.

There are orbits that stay in permanent sunlight, even in LEO.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#289

Post by mlinhares »

zbentley wrote: post #265
cladopa wrote: post #258

It is not a good idea listening to experts tell you what can't be done. Science and technology progresses one funeral at at time. Einstein's ideas were crazy for classical scientists and Heisenberg's for Einstein. The most important thing is making space access ten to one hundred times cheaper with reusable rockets. Then a lot of the problems in the article will not be problems at all. E.g ISS was designed and create…

Selection bias. Science is very very very rarely disrupted by a small group of visionaries in the same way business or technology are. Substitute “perpetual motion machines” for “datacenters in space”. For very Heisenberg and Einstein there are thousands of crackpots who wasted huge amounts of (often other people’s) money trying to build perpetual motion machines. None of them were remembered. The overwhelming majori…

That doesn't sell though, so people very often ignore it, even when most recent innovations are due to that, like the atomic bomb.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#290

Post by tsimionescu »

alextingle wrote: post #208
fsh wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sports car radiator has about that size and dumps 1 MW without boiling the coolant.

A car's "radiator" doesn't actually lose heat by radiation though. It conducts heat to the air rushing through it. That's absolutely nothing like a radiator in a vacuum.

The question was about comparing the 1400KW of radiative cooling to how much convective coolig you could get from the same radiator on Earth.
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