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

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 01, 2025, 7:29 PM UTC

meepmorp wrote: post #165

philosophty wrote: post #106

"Terrestrial datacenters have parts fail and get replaced all the time." This premise is basically false. Most datacenter hardware, once it has completed testing and burn in, will last for years in constant use. There are definitely failures but they're very low unless something is wrong like bad cooling, vibration, or just a bad batch of hardware.

> unless something is wrong like ... vibration so you might have problems if you were to do something that causes a lot of vibration, like launch the entire data center into space?

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 01, 2025, 9:11 PM UTC

LambdaComplex wrote: post #126

philosophty wrote: post #106

"Terrestrial datacenters have parts fail and get replaced all the time." This premise is basically false. Most datacenter hardware, once it has completed testing and burn in, will last for years in constant use. There are definitely failures but they're very low unless something is wrong like bad cooling, vibration, or just a bad batch of hardware.

So, hardware lasts for years except in the cases where it doesn't?

Post by looofooo0 » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 12:43 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #289

looofooo0 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power!? Isnt that just PV and batteries? LEO has like 1.5h orbit.

As mentioned in the article the Starcloud design requires solar arrays that are ~2x more efficient than those deployed on the ISS. Simply scaling them up introduces more drag and weight problems as do the batteries needed to suffice for the 45 minutes of darkness the satellite will receive.