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Data centers in space makes no sense

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Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#531

Post by beloch »

energy123 wrote: post #514
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…

What in particular is wrong/misleading in the Starcloud whitepaper, then? https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf

In Table 1, the cost of cooling of a terrestrial data centre is listed as $7M. The cost of cooling in space is assigned a value of $0 with the claim:

"More efficient cooling architecture taking advantage of higher ΔT in space"

My bold claim: The cost of cooling will not be $0. The cost of launching that cooling into space will also not be $0. The cost of maintaining that mechanically complex cooling in space will not be $0.

They then throw in enough unrealistic calculations later in the "paper" to show that they thought about the actual cost at least a little bit. Apparently just enough to conclude that it's so massive there's no way they're going to list it in the table. Table 1 is pure fantasy.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#532

Post by HDThoreaun »

MengerSponge wrote: post #486
matt-p wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(DTC) Datacentres take electricity and turn it into low grade heat e.g 60c water. Put them anywhere where you've either got excess (cheap) energy or where you can use the heat. Either is fine, both is great, but neither is both bad and current standard practice. It's perfectly possible to put small data centres in city centres and pipe the heat around town, they take up very very little space and if you're consuming…

Resistive heating is a tremendously inefficient way to generate heat. Sometimes it's worth it if you get something useful in exchange (such as full spectrum light in the winter). But it's not all upsides. Heat pumps are magic . They're something like 300% efficient. Each watt generates 3 watts of useful heat.

Its not inefficient if you were creating the heat anyway, its a completely free byproduct.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#533

Post by trymas »

energy123 wrote: post #514
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…

What in particular is wrong/misleading in the Starcloud whitepaper, then? https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf

Previous discussions on HN: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44390781

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45667458

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43977188

I will not re-read them, but from what I recall from those threads is numbers don't make sense. Something like:

- radiators the multiple square kilometers in size, in space;

- lifting necessary payloads to space is multiples of magnitudes more than we have technology/capacity as the whole world now;

- maintanence nightmare. yeah you can have redundancy, but no feasable way to maintain;

- compare how much effort/energy/maintenance is required to have ISS or Tiangong space stations - these space datacenters sound ridiculous;

NB: I would be happy to be proven wrong. There are many things that are possible if we would invest effort (and money) into it, akin to JFK's "We choose to go to the Moon" talk. Sounded incredible, but it was done from nearly zero to Moon landing in ~7 years. Though as much as I udnerstand - napkin math for such scale of space data centers seem to need efforts that are orders or magnitude more than Apollo mission, i.e. launching Saturn V for years multiple times per day. Even with booster reuse technology this seems literally incredible (not to mention fuel/material costs).

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#534

Post by typ »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #400

As the focus here is solely on the US, and the comments focus too much on the impossibility of heat dissipation, I want to include some information to broaden the perspective. - In the EU, the ASCEND study conducted in 2024 by Thales Alenia Space found that data center in space could be possible by 2035. Data center in space could contribute to the EU's Net-Zero goal by 2050 [1] - heat dissipation could be greatly en…

> reduce energy requirement by 10-50 times

This is only relevant to the compute productivity (how much useful work it can produce), but it's irrelevant to the heat dissipation problem. The energy income is fundamentally limited by the solar facing area (x 1361 W/m^2). So the energy output cannot exceed it, regardless useful signals or just waste heat. Even if we just put a stone there, the equilibrium temperature wouldn't be any better or worse.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#536

Post by Juliate »

icepush wrote: post #84
mongol wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say there is an earth killing event, and let's say there is an outpost on Mars with some people on it. How much does it really matter that some humans survive, in light of the enormous catastrohophe that killed all life on earth? Is it a very worthwhile objective for our species to persist a while longer, or should we not just accept that also life itself will will die out on geological or astronomical time sca…

The whole point of the space stuff is not accepting all life dying out on any timescale.

Even rocks don’t last. What do you expect?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#537

Post by WalterBright »

sam wrote: post #414
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…

This is mistaken. In space a radiator can radiate to cold (2.7K) deep space. A thermos on earth cannot. The temperature difference between the inner and outer walls of the thermos is much lower and it’s the temperature difference which determines the rate of cooling.

I have a vacuum thermos. I've been unimpressed with its ability to keep coffee hot.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#539

Post by spoaceman7777 »

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…

He goes on about putting a mass driver on the moon for ultra-low-cost space launches.

His plan here clearly hinges around using robots to create a fully-automated GPU manufacturing and launch facility on the moon. Not launching any meaningful number from earth.

Raises some big questions about whether there are actually sufficient materials for GPU manufacture on the moon... But, whatever the case, the current pitch of earth-launches that the people involved with this "space datacenter" thing are making is a lie. I think it just sounds better than outright saying "we're going to build a self-replicating robot factory on the moon", and we are in the age of lying.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#540

Post by uoaei »

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 materialist take is that his plan is to eventually over-value and then trade on his company valuations, and also have another merger lined up for future personal financial bailouts.
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