You guys clearly didn't read the full blog post where Musk mentions lunar mining. They're going to put an ASML machine on the moon and turns regolith into chips and solar panels automatically. Literally free compute
Data centers in space makes no sense
141–150 of 1001 posts
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any country capable of producing nuclear warheads will also be able to toss up enough BBs and other small objects into LEO to wipe out most of Starlink and anything else in LEO. At least on Earth data centers in theory can be hidden and physically hardened. In orbit, even a crude rocket able to reach that plane can become a weapon of mass satellite destruction. Even if those orbits clear out in four or five years, by…
Any country capable of producing nuclear warheads will also be able to toss up enough BBs and other small objects into LEO to wipe out most of Starlink and anything else in LEO. South Africa built nuclear weapons in the 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_ma... But it never had an orbital launch capability. Pakistan doesn't have a domestic orbital launch capability but it does have nuclea…
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well this explains why, but does not answer how to get rid of excessive heat in space.
What kind of the problem you're talking about compared to existing satellites? That is, all existing satellites generate power, and need to dissipate that power, and most of it goes to waste heat, and the satellites somehow do that successfully - what is the specific problem you're talking about, which can't be solved by the same means?
So you're talking about an entirely different scale of power and needed cooling.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#144I'm convinced that >30% of this comes from ideas leaking out of fiction such as like Neuromancer , and percolating through the minds of wealthy people attracted to some of the concepts. Namely, the dream of being a hyper-wealthy dynasty, above any earthly government, controlling an extraterritorial Las Vegas Fiefdom In Space. (Which in the book, also hosted a powerful AI.) Then they work backwards, trying to figure o…
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well this explains why, but does not answer how to get rid of excessive heat in space.
What kind of the problem you're talking about compared to existing satellites? That is, all existing satellites generate power, and need to dissipate that power, and most of it goes to waste heat, and the satellites somehow do that successfully - what is the specific problem you're talking about, which can't be solved by the same means?
Assuming he built this in LEO (which doesn't make sense because of atmospheric drag), and the highest estimates for what starship could one day deliver to LEO (200 metric tons), and only 1 metric ton of radiators per 100KW, that's 50 launches just to carry up the radiators.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#146I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…
Sure, space is cold. Good luck cooling your gear with a vacuum.
Don't even get me started on radiation, or even lack of gravity when it comes to trying to run high powered compute in space. If you think you are just going to plop a 1-4U server up there designed for use on earth, you are going to have some very interesting problems pop up. Anything not hardened for space is going to have a very high error/failure rate, and that includes anything socketed...
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#147You guys clearly didn't read the full blog post where Musk mentions lunar mining. They're going to put an ASML machine on the moon and turns regolith into chips and solar panels automatically. Literally free compute
Also cities in Mars, like who the fuck wants to live there?
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#148It possibly makes sense if you're preparing for war, harder to hit, harder to physically break into, beyond the range of nuclear EMP, and accessible from anywhere on earth.
Any country capable of producing nuclear warheads will also be able to toss up enough BBs and other small objects into LEO to wipe out most of Starlink and anything else in LEO. At least on Earth data centers in theory can be hidden and physically hardened. In orbit, even a crude rocket able to reach that plane can become a weapon of mass satellite destruction. Even if those orbits clear out in four or five years, by…
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#149I'm convinced that >30% of this comes from ideas leaking out of fiction such as like Neuromancer , and percolating through the minds of wealthy people attracted to some of the concepts. Namely, the dream of being a hyper-wealthy dynasty, above any earthly government, controlling an extraterritorial Las Vegas Fiefdom In Space. (Which in the book, also hosted a powerful AI.) Then they work backwards, trying to figure o…
It appears to have come out of a crack pipe.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#150Very confused by this plan. Data centers on Earth are struggling with how to get rid of waste heat. It's really, really hard to get rid of waste heat in space. That seems to be about the worst possible place to put a data center.
Well the issue is that a lot of people believe that space is cold. If you will ask Google/Gemini what is a temperature of space, it will tell you: The average temperature of deep space is approximately -270.45°C or 2.73 Kelvin), which is just above absolute zero. This baseline temperature is set by the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiatio... Which is absolute nonsense, because vacuum has no temperature.