Computing hardware that isn't rad-hard is going to have a bad time without a handy atmosphere for shielding.
And hardware that is happy in high-radiation environments is not going to be fast.
Data centers in space makes no sense
291–300 of 1001 posts
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#292Isn't Starlink already basically a distributed datacenter in space? they have like
~9k+ satellites up there already at least according to: https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html.
what am I missing here?
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#293Given xAI's gross disregard for environmental regulations in building Colossus, the reason for building datacenters in space seems obvious: there's no EPA in space.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#294I 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 equation has a ^4 to the temperature. If you raise the temperature of your radiator by ~50 degrees you double its emission capacity. This is well within the range of specialised phase change compressors, aka fancy air conditioning pumps. Next up in the equation is surface emissivity which we’ve got a lot of experience in the automotive sector. And finally surface area, once again, getting quite good here with nan…
Raise the temperature of your radiator by 50 degrees and you double its emission capacity. Or put your radiator in the atmosphere and multiply its heat exchange capacity by a factor of a thousand.
It's not physically impossible. Of course not. It's been done thousands of times already. But it doesn't make any economic sense. It's like putting a McDonald's at the top of Everest. Is it possible? Of course. Is it worth the enormous difficulty and expense to put one there? Not even a little.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm confused about the level of conversation here. Can we actually run the math on heat dissipation and feasibility? A Starlink satellite uses about 5K Watts of solar power. It needs to dissipate around that amount (+ the sun power on it) just to operate. There are around 10K starlink satellites already in orbit, which means that the Starlink constellation is already effectively equivalent to a 50 Mega-watt (in a rou…
Amazon’s new campus in Indiana is expected to use 2.2GW when complete. 50Mw is nothing, and that’s ignoring the fact that most of that power wouldn't actually be used for compute.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#296If we won't stop what he is doing with grok and ai-generated CSAM, he will be completely free from oversight up there.
As silly as that sounds, you gave me a thought ...
If SpaceX, by being a company serving the federal government are covered by a law that would make its offices (on Earth, duh) a protected area ... then could they by some law-bending make that protection also encompass the data centres that contain the AI-generated CSAM and training data, in order to protect them from being raided by state law enforcement?
That does not have to sound reasonable to us ... only to Musk.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
but if you did use thermometer in space it would eventual read 2.73 kelvin right? so whats the issue? and also for a space based server it would have to deal with the energy coming from the sun
There is no matter. It's cold there because there isn't anything there. So there is nothing to conduct or convect the heat away. It's like a giant vacuum insulated thermos. Is putting data centers in thermos' a good idea?
i am not saying its a good idea, just wondering because you say space has no temperature, but that makes no sense for the reason CMB radiation would prevent you from having 0 k right? and in fact how would you even measure it? wouldn't the measuring device its self have way more then 0K?
plus you would have to insulate the servers from the sun...then have radiators like the ISS... i think its just way easier to run a server on the ground
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#298Isn't Starlink already basically a distributed datacenter in space? they have like ~9k+ satellites up there already at least according to: https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html . what am I missing here?
I'd assume Starlink satellites do the minimal possible amount of compute required (thus power used, thus heat generated) to provide service. The builders of data centers are hungry for as many watts on Earth as they can source.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#299I 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.
> 10th (or worse) best AI company
You might only care about coding models, but text is dominating the market share right now and Grok is the #2 model for that in arena rankings.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#300> Kessler syndrome: a cascading explosion of debris crippling our access to space
I'm taking the parts of this write-up I don't have expertise with a grain of salt after seeig this.
Kessler cascades are real. Particularly at high altitudes. They're less of a problem in LEO. And in no case can they "[cripple] our access to space." (At current technology levels. To cripple access to space you need to vaporise material fractions of the Earth's crust into orbit.)