171–180 of 282 posts
It is much easier to blow things up on land than in space, and the 'negative externalities' simpler to make assumptions about.
The value of this to the people who would be in charge of this "compute" and "storage" is likely much larger than the difference in energy cost.
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There’s a big difference between “impossible” (it isn’t) and “practical” (it isn’t).
What happened to "do things that don't scale"?
Unless you have a plan to change the laws of physics, space will always be a good insulator compared to what we have here on Earth.
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Yeah that's just flat out wrong then: you can't use the solar array as a radiator.
Of course you can. You can use everything as a radiator. Unless you have something which is literally 0 Kelvin everything radiates. See here for all the great ways of getting rid of thermal energy in space: https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/sst-soa/thermal-cont...
First you have to pay energy to get to LEO
A Starship Launch costs[0] 51.75 TJ of energy in terms of its methane fuel.
It will be able to take a payload of 150 tonnes or 331,000 pounds[1].
How many computers is that?
One online estimate says a computer weights 80 lbs or 35 kg.
So 150000 kg / 35 kg/computer = approximately 4285 computers that we can launch into orbit per Starship.
51.75TJ / 4285 computers = approximately 12.08 GJ per computer to place it in orbit.
Let's say each computer is a H200 and consumes 700 watts continuously. How long would it need to run in orbit before it used as much energy for computation as it took to launch it?
12.08 GJ / 700 W = 12,080,000,000 J / 700 J/s = approximately 17,257,143 seconds.
Or about 6.5 months to break even on energy.
That sounds pretty good, except my estimate for the weight of each compute unit and associated power system & cooling etc. are probably underestimates by one or two orders of magnitude. In which case you'd be looking at 5 to 50 years to break even on energy, by which time the chips are obsolete and need to be replaced anyway.
[0] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/66480/how-much-ene... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship#Description
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Yeah, I don't see a way to get around the fact that space is a fabulous insulator. That's precisely how expensive insulated drink containers work so well. If it was just about cooling and power availability, you'd think people would be running giant solar+compute barges in international waters, but nobody is doing that. Even the "seasteading" guys from last decade. These proposals, if serious, are just to avoid plann…
You should read the linked article, they talk about it there. You radiate the heat into space which takes less surface area than the solar panels and you can just have them back to back. In general I don't understand this line of thinking. This would be such a basic problem to miss, so my first instinct would be to just look up what solution other people propose. It is very easy to find this online.
Here's some math on how affordable that abundant LEO solar energy is: First you have to pay energy to get to LEO A Starship Launch costs[0] 51.75 TJ of energy in terms of its methane fuel. It will be able to take a payload of 150 tonnes or 331,000 pounds[1]. How many computers is that? One online estimate says a computer weights 80 lbs or 35 kg. So 150000 kg / 35 kg/computer = approximately 4285 computers that we can…
So yes, 10-100x extra is probably reasonable.
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What happened to "do things that don't scale"?
Maybe you should re-read the "do things that don't scale" article. It is about doing things manually until you figure out what you should automate, and only then do you automate it. It's not about doing unscalable things forever. Unless you have a plan to change the laws of physics, space will always be a good insulator compared to what we have here on Earth.
No need to rewrite anything. Radiators are 30% heavier per watt than solar panels. This is far from impossible.
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I think they last 2-3 years after they run out of argon fuel , so more like 7-8 years total. It looks like some Starlinks from Nov 2019 are still operational.
My understanding was that anything at ~500km needed readjustments every few months in order to not come down. Much less than 2-3 years. I'd be interested to know what the average lifespan or failure rate of Starlink has been. That's good that some are still up there 6+ years later, but I know many aren't. I'm not sure how many of those ran out of fuel, had hardware failures, or were simply obsolete, but an AFR would…