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Data centers in space makes no sense

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Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#141

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

Makes sense. I hope their plasma coolant supplies last long enough to get self sustained.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#142

Earlier 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…

presumably the UK could figure out how to remove the top of a trident missile and replace it with a load of ball bearings

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#143
post #112

Earlier 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?

Even the buses for giant communications satellites are still at the single digit kilowatt scale. The current state of the art in AI datacenters is 500+ kw per rack.

So you're talking about an entirely different scale of power and needed cooling.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#144
post #31

I'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…

This idea came from musk wanting to fold his X and xAI investments in with his (likely successful) spaceX IPO.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#145
post #112

Earlier 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?

The ISS's radiators weigh thousands of kilograms to radiate around 70 KW. He's talking about building data centers in space in the GW range.

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

#146
post #115

I 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…

Not going to read the article, because Data centers in space = DOA is common sense to me, however, did the article really claim cooling wasn't an issue? Do they not understand the laws of thermodynamics, physics, etc?

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

#147

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

Also cities in Mars, like who the fuck wants to live there?

We can't keep our already perfect planet livable, but we're going to terraform a totally new one. Yeah right buddy.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#148

It 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…

Isn't the eventual plan to park these data centers out by the Lagrange points?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#149
post #31

I'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…

I wouldn’t credit science fiction for much of this.

It appears to have come out of a crack pipe.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#150

Very 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.

That's not how it works. Two bodies are in thermal equilibrium if there's no heat transfer between them: that's the zeroth law of thermodynamics. If you're colder than 2.73K in deep space, you will absorb the heat from the Cosmic Microwave Background. If you're hotter, you will irradiate heat away. So it does have a temperature.
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