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Datacenters in space aren't going to work

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Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#231

Post by verzali »

ACCount37 wrote: post #218
collinmcnulty wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think GP's point is that an advanced nation-state could just as easily shoot down an orbiting data center as an oceanic data center and that "international space" offers an equally flimsy defense as "international waters" but a much larger price.

Antisatellite weapons are expensive and rare, and also woefully inadequate for dealing with megaconstellations. If there's one large orbital datacenter, then sure, ASAT is a threat to it. But if it's a dispersed swarm like the Starlink system? Good luck making a dent in that. You'd run out of ASAT long before Musk runs out of Starlink.

You only need to destroy a few. Then you have a cloud of debris that will take down the rest or at the very least force them to use all their fuel making evasive manoeuvres.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#232

Post by dsign »

Even if they are a terrible idea, we should try it out. Specially if paid with private equity. Imagine the things we will learn, the STEM jobs this will create[^1], and the fact we will bootstrap other industries.

[^1]: Provided that ChatGPT doesn't hoard all of them :-)

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#233

Post by adastra22 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #227

There are lots of reasons why keeping data centers on the ground might be cheaper but the article seems to be skipping over a few things. 1) ISS is about 30 years old. It's hardly the state of the art in solar technology. Also, it's much easier to get light to solar panels far a larger part of the time. Permanently in some orbits. And of course there is 0% chance of clouds or other obstructions. 2) We'll have Starshi…

Solar panel performance is not the limiting factor in space. Thermal management is. Better solar panels don't help you here. Neither does permanent sunshine -- without the capability to radiate more heat at night, you've made the thermal management problem immensely worse.

Rockets: Launching no mass to orbit is even cheaper still.

Bandwidth: You do realize that even starlink speeds are crazy slow and high latency compared to data center optical connections? Fiber and copper always win out over wifi. With space, you are stuck with wifi. (Oversimplified, but accurate.)

Space solar power: there has been talk of this for half a century, yes. It never materialized because, like space data centers, it doesn't make economic sense.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#234

Post by nrhrjrjrjtntbt »

Not a space geek but would have guessed at all these things. Feels like common sense. How is anything easier in space? None of it makes sense to me either.

The only thing I could think of is maybe 24h sunlight if far enough away from earth.

Maybe is anothet bubble to grab investor money. A bored ape larping as science.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#235

Post by adastra22 »

Animats wrote: post #158

Related" "A City on Mars" (2024) [1] A useful book on why self-sustaining settlements on Luna, Mars, or earth orbit are pretty much hopeless. Remote bases that take a lot of supply, maybe, with great difficulty. The environment is just too hostile and doesn't have essential resources for self-sustaining settlements. The authors go into how Antarctic bases work and how Biosphere II didn't. The worst real estate on Ear…

I'm as critical as OP on data centers in space, but "A City on Mars" was a really badly researched book, full of errors, that completely misrepresented the would-be Mars settler position. I wouldn't take seriously anyone quoting it unless they've also read, at minimum, "The Case for Mars" as well.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#236

Post by nrhrjrjrjtntbt »

mbesto wrote: post #120

Datacenters in space is about circumventing nation states masked as ambitions to generate more power. Follow the rationale: 1. Nation states ultimately control three key infrastructure pieces required to run data centers (a) land (protected by sovereign armed forces) (b) internet / internet infra (c) electricity. If crypto ever became a legitimate threat, nation states could simply seize any one of or all these three…

By the same argument Google could start literal star wars by blowing up AWS data centres. Because it is the wild west up there right? No pesky laws.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#237

Post by Ekaros »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #197

To say the quiet part out loud, I don't think any serious companies have any intention to build a data center in space. There is no benefit in actually trying this. There is however, benefit in saying you'll do it to advance a narrative and distract from the problems terrestrial data centers are facing to an audience that mostly doesn't understand how heat transfer in a vacuum works.

It can be considered as advertising. Like Coca-Cola. Not actually anything new or real most of the time. But keeping the mind-share. Making the company seem like they are on cutting-edge, visionary and futuristic. After all the scam is build on future promises. And not the current day real profits.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#238

Post by verzali »

wat10000 wrote: post #180
andrewflnr wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, sure, technically. To be fair you can't really assess the opex of technology that doesn't exist yet, but I find it hard to believe that operating brand new, huge machines that have to move fluid around (and not nice fluids either) will ever be less than it is on the surface. Better hope you never get a coolant leak. Heck, it might even be that opex=0 still isn't enough to offset the "capex". Space is already hard…

Maintenance will be impossible or at least prohibitively expensive. Which means your only opex is ground support. But it also means your capex depreciates over whatever lifetime these things will have with zero repairs or preventive maintenance.

But ground support will not be cheap. You need to transfer a huge amount of data, which means you need to run and maintain a network of ground stations. And satellite operations are not as cheap as people like to think either.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#239

Post by tetha »

mbesto wrote: post #120

Datacenters in space is about circumventing nation states masked as ambitions to generate more power. Follow the rationale: 1. Nation states ultimately control three key infrastructure pieces required to run data centers (a) land (protected by sovereign armed forces) (b) internet / internet infra (c) electricity. If crypto ever became a legitimate threat, nation states could simply seize any one of or all these three…

This is one of the early tipping points in the background of the game "Eclipse Phase", which I always found interesting:

--- >8 ---

The power of nation states is rooted in control of land and safety, as well as resources, which is an extension of the control of land. But once mining asteroids became economically viable, the connection between land and resources disappeared. Once space habitation in space and secretly developed weapon systems from space became viable, the connection between safety, habitation and land disappeared.

This allowed corporations and new organizations to rise to power large enough to challenge nation states. Those in power did feared to lose their power, which caused the great war which gave rise to the grey mass and destroyed earth.

--- 8It's a very cool back story, which gives rise to a rogue nanite swarm (the gray mass), which forces an evacuation of earth within days. The only way this was even possible was by uploading human minds onto storage and planting them in robots later on. Naturally, most humans are then forced to work for these corporations. Other humans are still biological and they don't like robots, to say the least.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#240

Post by nrhrjrjrjtntbt »

suriya-ganesh wrote: post #137
MadnessASAP wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're already well versed in dodging fiscal rules, why do they need a space computer?

Physical location is difficult to dodge unfortunately. Fiscal rules are sort of man made.

Bitcoin is a great example of something outside of jursidictions. Now look at how much BTC the FBI has seized. In practice, power is gonna power. The US, Russia or China can take out your data centre unless you play by whatever the rules are. If not physically blow up you need to trade, you need a country for ground operations etc. You need a downlink. Being in space meaning no jurisdiction is plain rediculous.
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