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Data centers in space makes no sense

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Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#181

Post by breput »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #162
beloch wrote: 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 disagreeing with you at all: that physics fact always come up. My honest question is: if it's a perfect thermos, what does, for example, the ISS do with the heat generated by computers and humans burning calories? The ISS is equipped with a mechanism to radiate excess heat into space? Or is the ISS slowly heating up but it's not a problem?

Massive radiators. In this photo[0], all of the light gray panels are thermal radiators. Note how they are nearly as large as the solar panels, which gives you an idea about the scale needed to radiate away 3-12 people's worth of heat (~1200 watts) + the heat generated by equipment.

[0] https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/jsc2021e064215_alt/jsc2...

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#182

Post by iknowstuff »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #121
beloch wrote: 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…

Its very simple, xAI needs money to win the AI race, so best option is to attach to Elon’s moneybank (spacex) to get cash without dilution

Remember how he argued for Tesla’s Solarcity acquisition because solar roofs?

Data centers in space are the same kind of justification imo.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#183

Post by gct »

guluarte wrote: post #116
xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #89

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?

Mars which is literally covered in poisonous perchlorate soil

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#184

Post by morshu9001 »

0x53 wrote: post #11
izzydata wrote: post #5

How about we just make a giant heatsink that reaches into space instead. Then we can cool the whole planet. Coming up with crazy ideas is cheap, but the logistics are obviously impractical.

Look into radiative cooling. Basically this, but more practical. Several companies working on it: https://www.skycoolsystems.com/

This looks like it depends on the outside air to cool the coolant. "Radiative" can mean that too, not just IR radiation.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#185

Post by snewman »

bs7280 wrote: post #163

As a thought experiment, if humanity wanted to go all in on trying to move industrial processes and data centers off planet, would it make more sense to do so on the moon? The moon has: - Some water - Some materials that can be used to manufacture crude things (like heat sinks?) - a ton of area to brute force the heat sink problem - a surface to burry the data centers under to solve the radiation problem - close enou…

Water on the moon is limited and difficult to collect, it wouldn't make sense to use it for industrial purposes. It's a very challenging thermal environment (baking during the day, freezing at night). But perhaps worst of all, every month there's a 14-day period with no solar power. Overall seems worse than low-earth orbit.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#186

Post by scottyah »

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #158
Terr_ wrote: 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…

A lot more. Everyone is chasing scifi ideas, ridiculous. This shows that even people with high IQ lack fantasy/imagination and creativity. They are intelligent robots. So whenever I see here or anywhere else that your ideas mean nothing I just laugh at it. Of course, these come from people who are bland, doesn't have any imagination and they are not creative at all at all, but they have brute force, which is money.

Write some books with good ideas then so future human-robots will be inspired to make your dreams into reality.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#187

Post by recursive »

idontwantthis wrote: post #124
beloch wrote: 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…

One man able to put a data center worth of mass in orbit is one man able to crash a datacenter worth of mass into Earth anywhere he wants.

Not a given. Re enter the atmosphere. Sure. Avoid vaporization? Much harder problem.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#188

Post by morshu9001 »

thfuran wrote: post #62
ortusdux wrote: post #23

Is there any insight into how Starlink solved cooling? One 'expert' insisted that there is no reason to expect that data center satellites would generate any more heat than starlinks.

Those have a power budget of about 1 rack. I would expect a datacenter satellite to need more cooling if it has more compute.

And 1 ML rack uses the power of like 10 regular racks

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#189

Post by pidge »

grim_io wrote: post #68
0x53 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look into radiative cooling. Basically this, but more practical. Several companies working on it: https://www.skycoolsystems.com/

I don't quite believe this. Is it really better than just using solar panels to run a heat pump?

> Our core innovation is a radiative cooling material that we’ve combined with a panel system to improve the efficiency of any vapor-compression based cooling system

A heat pump is a “ vapor-compression based cooling system” so that tech is an addition-to not an instead-of.

Whether it’s better probably depends on how expensive the additional efficiency is in practice.

> SkyCool’s Panels save 2x – 3x as much energy as a solar panel generates given the same area.

So if you’re area constrained maybe.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#190

Post by scottyah »

Terr_ wrote: 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 mean definitely, and they're not shy about admitting it. They see cool stuff in imagination-land, think it's cool, and work to make it a reality. Many people have worked to make the fantastical things shown in Star Trek.
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