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Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

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Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#31
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: reliable energy. Even in low earth orbit, isn't sunlight plentiful? My layman's guess says it's in direct sun 80-95% of the time, with deterministic shade.

It's super reliable, provided you've got the stored energy for the reliable periods of downtime (or a sun synchronous orbit). Energy storage is a solved problem, but you need rather a lot of it for a datacentre and that's all mass which is very expensive to launch and to replace at the end of its usable lifetime. Same goes for most of the other problems brought up

You answered it yourself, a sun synchronous orbit negates the need for large battery systems.

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#32
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Servers outside any legal jurisdiction. Priceless.

Unless the company blasts its HQ and all its employees into space, no, they are very much subject to the jurisdiction of the countries they operate in. The physical location of the data center is irrelevant.

Exactly. Government entities have a funny habit of making their own decisions about what (and who) is and is not subject to their jurisdiction.

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nations are responsible for all spacecraft they launch, no matter whether the government or a non-governmental group launches them. Nations come and go. In my lifetime, the world map has changed dozens of times. Incorporate in a country that doesn't look like it's going to be around very long. More than likely, the people running it will be happy to take your money.

Generally though, countries don’t disappear: they have a predecessor and a successor.

A successor may take possession of the land, but that doesn't mean it will also take responsibility for the previous government's liabilities.

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#37
My napkin is with Starcloud https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43190778 , ie. one Starship $10M launch - 10 000 GPU datacenter into LEO with energy and cooling. I missed there batteries for the half the time being in the Earth shadow (as originally i calculated that for crypto where you can have half the time off which isn't the case for the regular datacenter) and panels to charge them, that adds 10kg for 1 KWH, and thus it will get down to about 5000 GPU for the same weight and launch cost.

Paradoxically the datacenter in LEO is cheaper than on the ground, and have bunch of other benefits like for example physical security.

Re: Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally though, countries don’t disappear: they have a predecessor and a successor.

A successor may take possession of the land, but that doesn't mean it will also take responsibility for the previous government's liabilities.

That is why international treaties come with implicit or explicit enforcement options
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