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Data centers in space makes no sense

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Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#961

Post by PinkiesBrain »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #757
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…

Yeah the Space Data Center companies completely gloss over this fact by saying "oh yeah and we'll need radiators 10x the size of our solar panels. NBD."

Because it's not 10x. If you cool the solar panels (which aren't black body absorbers for longer wavelengths) and GPUs to 80C through a heatpump and have the blackbody radiator at 120C it will approximately work out, 1:1.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#962

Post by DoctorOetker »

estimator7292 wrote: post #936
DoctorOetker wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. 1) The heat can be transported by a heat carrier conducting heat standing still. 2) The heat can be transported by a heat carrier in motion. 3) The heat can be transported by thermal radiation. The first 2 require massive particles, the latter are spontaneous photons. A thermos bottle does not simply work by eliminatin…

Nobody made any of the claims you're "refuting". You've imagined an argument so you can dunk on it to appear superior. In addition, thermoses aren't made of glass. It is far more common to make them out of steel or aluminum.

I literally quote a person attributing the thermal insulation capabilities of vacuum flasks mono-causally to the lack of gas. I didn't imagine this, its right there to verify. Reminding people of laws of nature that have been known for 150 years and have withstood the test of time of investigation by physicists isn't "dunking on" anything, just reminding people of how the universe works.

The original vacuum flasks were made of glass, and a lot of laboratory grade vacuum flasks and Dewars are still made of glass. The consumer level Thermoses eventually switched to stainless steel.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#963

Post by ehnto »

turtlesdown11 wrote: post #691
ehnto wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised the space casino hasn't been done to be honest. Or some kind of space resort. I guess we are stepping across the stepping stones now, with private space flights, and private space fairing companies. Maybe it is just a matter of time before the Crystal Palace sees its first billionare clients.

> I am surprised the space casino hasn't been done to be honest. Or some kind of space resort. The ISS is the single most expensive thing built by humankind ($100b+). What makes you think that building a "space casino" or "space resort" is commercially viable?

Without getting into the weeds, I don't think it would be commercially viable, but that doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for funding these days.

I would also note that the ISS is a very expensive long term project, a greenfields space station like Tiangong from my understanding was about a 10th of the cost. One of these billionaires could pay for the whole thing out of pocket.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#964

Post by sgt »

zbentley wrote: post #935
indoordin0saur wrote: post #889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blue Origin at least runs its rockets on hydrogen whose exhaust is only water.

And heat and pressure. Negligible amounts in terms of the biosphere, but not in terms of flora and fauna in proximity to launch sites.

Flora and fauna near launch sites is not a battle you are going to win. The next space race will need more launch sites, not fewer and we're gonna have to accept a negative impact around those sites.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#966

Post by fny »

mike_hearn wrote: post #582
elamje wrote: post #353

I was talking to someone about this the other day. I was part of a team at NASA that developed a cooling system for the ISS and this whole premise makes no sense to me. 1. Getting things to space is incredibly expensive 2. Ingress/egress are almost always a major bottleneck - how is bandwidth cheaper in space? 3. Chips must be “Rad-hard” - that is do more error correcting from ionizing radiation - there were entire t…

It sounds hard but it shouldn't not make sense. 1. Solving cost of launching mass has been the entire premise of SpaceX since day one and they have the track record. 2. Ingress/egress aren't at all bottlenecks for inferencing. The bytes you get before you max out a context window are trivial, especially after compression. If you're thinking about latency, chat latencies are already quite high and there's going to be…

(5) Is there a reason why we don't investigate using a cable to pull down energy to earth? That seems to be a far more valuable and tractable problem to solve.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#968

Post by casey2 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #582
elamje wrote: post #353

I was talking to someone about this the other day. I was part of a team at NASA that developed a cooling system for the ISS and this whole premise makes no sense to me. 1. Getting things to space is incredibly expensive 2. Ingress/egress are almost always a major bottleneck - how is bandwidth cheaper in space? 3. Chips must be “Rad-hard” - that is do more error correcting from ionizing radiation - there were entire t…

It sounds hard but it shouldn't not make sense. 1. Solving cost of launching mass has been the entire premise of SpaceX since day one and they have the track record. 2. Ingress/egress aren't at all bottlenecks for inferencing. The bytes you get before you max out a context window are trivial, especially after compression. If you're thinking about latency, chat latencies are already quite high and there's going to be…

There is no "solving cost of launch" even if it was 10x cheaper, for 10x lighter data centers that's still hundreds of flights and billions just to get the raw materials to GSO for the performance of a single data center, with no gain.

Keep in mind there has only been ~600 falcon 9 launches in total. What makes you believe SpaceX can ramp rocket flights up faster than we could just build nuclear here on earth? Where there is, you know, construction infrastructure?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#970

Post by burnt-resistor »

Ifkaluva wrote: post #133
__loam wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't even tell what's sarcasm anymore lol.

The comment you are replying to is definitely sarcasm… I hope?

Godwin's law broke down re widespread geopolitical changes, and I think Poe's isn't far behind.
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