301–310 of 447 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only real advantage is 24/7 power without having to use batteries (or some other power supply at night or when cloudy). The way solar prices are going the problem of suppling power when the sun isn’t visible is a real bottleneck.
Is there an orbit which has 24/7 sun and a visibility to same location?
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.
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.
The only real advantage is 24/7 power without having to use batteries (or some other power supply at night or when cloudy). The way solar prices are going the problem of suppling power when the sun isn’t visible is a real bottleneck.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is far easier to build them at remote places and bunkers (or both). Even at the middle of the ocean will make more sense and provide better cooling (See Microsoft attempt at that).
it is not far easier to distribute content from a bunker than from the space.
Datacenters in space have one asymmetrical advantage: FBI cant physically raid them. And with Direct-To-Cell, content delivery satellites in space are unstoppable.
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.
We've moved past bullshit jobs to a bullshit economy, which operates by moving money from investors to billionaires and back again, driven by pitch deck thoughts and prayers and implied threats. ("Bail us out or everyone dies.")
I am skeptical as well BUT on the cooling question, which is one of the main concerns we all seem to have, the article is doing a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison between the ISS and a cluster of small satellites. It cites the ISS's centralized 16kW cooling system which is for a big space station that needs to collect and shunt heat over a relatively large area. The Suncatcher prototype is puny in comparison: j…
Arguments re: Methane as a non-renewable resource are of course right, except that we technically can synthesize methane from CO2 + electricity (e.g., terraform industries), but the pollution angle is presented as-is, without a systematic analysis, right?
What's the actual atmospheric burden here?
This essentially says "We dont know"
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2025/03/04/rockets-affect-...
What better way to cover up such space compute capabilities than the AI madness.
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…
>"A City on Mars" (2024) I wasn't terribly impressed with this one. I found it mostly just a bundle of vague negativity and insufficient (disingenuous?) use of problem-solving. However if you want to try it then give the rebuttal a fair shake too. https://nss.org/wp-content/uploads/NSS-JOURNAL-Critique-of-A...
Hmmm.