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Data centers in space makes no sense

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Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#201

Post by strangeloops85 »

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…

The elephant in the room for all lunar scenarios is lunar regolith. Even ignoring the toxicity to humans (big problem and will happen quite quickly for any humans there!), it will be a big long-term problem for robots and machinery in general.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#202

Post by ezst »

croddin wrote: post #135
xupybd wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he has rocket company that needs more work. Sufficient hype funds more work for his rocket company. The more work they have the faster they can develop the systems to get to Mars. His pet project. I really think it's that simple.

Starlink and Falcon 9 have been an excellent pairing, Falcon 9 partially reusable rockets created a lot launch capacity and starlink filled the demand. Starship if it meets its goals will create more launch fully reusable supply by orders of magnitude, but there is not the demand for all that launch capacity. Starlink can take some of it but probably not all so they need to find a customer to fill it in order to buil…

> colonize mars

Oh, that crap again.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#204

Post by mhh__ »

youarentrightjr wrote: post #108
mhh__ wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah he only micromanages (look at his old blog) every detail he has time for at an extremely successful aerospace engineering company, just an ideas guy.

> Yeah he only micromanages (look at his old blog) every detail he has time for at an extremely successful aerospace engineering company, just an ideas guy. Have you ever spoken to someone who works at SpaceX? I have multiple friends in the industry, who have taken a trip through the company. The overwhelming consensus is that - in meetings, you nod along and tell Elon "great idea". Immediately after you get back to…

Why are they doing any better than any other firm then? Why has Tesla been successful? Why is xAI pretty similar in terms of approach? My idea has less variables than yours. It also doesn't fly with his tendency to fire people.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#205

Post by ojbyrne »

lancewiggs wrote: post #177
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…

It's exiting the 5th best social network and the 10th (or worse) best AI company and selling them to a decent company. It probably increases Elon's share of the combined entity. It delivers on a promise to investors that he will make money for them, even as the underlying businesses are lousy.

Plus government backstop. The federal government (especially the current one) is not going to let SpaceX fail.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#206

Post by scottyah »

stouset wrote: post #157
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…

[flagged]

There are several companies working on this, and the first generation tech is already proven, working in space on the ISS. Even Paul G is on board. https://x.com/paulg/status/2009686627506065779?s=20

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#207

Post by sfink »

geoffeg wrote: post #49
retube wrote: post #30

It's lala land nonsense. - Data centres need a lot of power = giant vast solar panels - Data centres need a lot of cooling. That's some almighty heatsinks you're going need - They will need to be radiation-hardened to avoid memory corruption = even more mass - The hardware will be redundant in like 2 years tops and will need replacing to stay competitive - Data centres are about 100x bigger (not including solar panel…

Maybe instead of housing life, civilizations develop Dyson's spheres to house data centers. Solar panels on the interior, thermal radiators on the exterior and the data centers make up the structure in between. Combine that Von Neumann probes and you've got a fun new Fermi paradox hypothesis!

Don't combine it with von Neumann probes and you've solved the Fermi paradox: a civilization that puts that much work into computing power is either doing the equivalent of mining crypto and going nowhere, or is doing AI and is so dependent on it that they inevitably form a vast echo chamber (echo sphere?) that only wants to talk to itself (itselves?) and can't bear to be left out by adding the latency unavoidably added by distance.

tl;dr: civilizations advanced enough to travel between stars end up trapped by the resources and physics required to keep up with the Joneses.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#208

Post by strange_quark »

Findecanor wrote: post #195
atleastoptimal wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> win the AI race I keep seeing that term, but if it does not mean "AI arms race" or "AI surveillance race", what does it mean? Those are the only explanations that I have found, and neither is any race that I would like to see anyone win.

It’s a framing device to justify the money, the idea being the first company (to what?) will own the market.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#209

Post by strangeloops85 »

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…

The energy economics in space are also a bit more complicated than usually thought. I think Starlink has been using Si cells instead of III-V-based ones, but in addition to lower output they also tend to degrade faster under radiation. I guess that's ok if the GPU is going to be toast in a few years anyway so you might as well de-orbit the whole thing. But that same solar cell on Earth will happily be producing for 40+ years.

Also the same issue with radiative cooling pops up for space solar cells - they tend to run way hotter than on Earth and that lowers their efficiency relative to what you could get terrestrially.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#210

Post by s0a »

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…

quantum computers on the sun!
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