The prelude of a Dyson Sphere!
Starcloud
41–50 of 234 posts
Re: Starcloud
#42One of the selling points they mention is that they won't need to use any fresh water for cooling. My understanding was that water-demands on Earth were an overblown issue and minuscule when compared to other uses of fresh water such as watering one acre of farmland. Not to mention, "used" water is just "warm" water that can then be used again for other purposes. So are they perpetuating a myth here? Or is water use…
It's not a real issue, but it's truthy enough to generate real opposition to datacenter buildout and catalyze AI hate. So definitionally avoiding it from the get-go might end up being worth it.
Re: Starcloud
#43So many questions, like how would you protect from bit flips, damage to circuits. "10x lower energy costs and reduce the need for energy consumption on Earth." I am not sure if we need a rocket scientist to calculate the energy costs of manufacturing and sending a rocket to outer space versus putting that fuel into a generator and just letting it run. What happens when the servers need to retire due to some unpatchab…
Yeah, radiation is the enemy of integrated circuits, cosmic radiation is more damaging the smaller the features get.
You pretty much have to have multiple redundancy and special space-rated HW, which I wouldn't be surprised is stuck at super old process nodes to mitigate this exact same issue.
Re: Starcloud
#44>Starcloud’s space-based data centers can use the vacuum of deep space as an infinite heat sink.
The famously heat conductive vacuum...
Someone fedex a vacuum flask full of hot coffee to nvidia HQ with an explanatory note.
Re: Starcloud
#45We've officially lost the plot, we will now ship our AI data centers to ~space~ ... This will not work with modern technology. The sun will be eclipsed by earth many times per day, requiring you to either shift all workloads or add substantial UPS weight. The radiator grid you need to cool 125kw is something like 16x the size of the entire data center. I watched this video last week that went into 3 different scenari…
So what you're saying is we should put them on the moon?
[deleted]
Re: Starcloud
#46Last time these folks were mentioned on HN, there was a lot of skepticism that this is really possible to do. The issue is cooling: in space, you can't rely on convection or conduction to do passive cooling, so you can only radiate away heat. However, the radiator would need to be several kilometers big to provide enough cooling, and obviously launching such a large object into space would therefore eat up any cost s…
This is a big thing never shown in sci-fi. For example, those huge torch ships in The Expanse would need gigantic radiators. Even if the drive were upwards of 90% efficient the waste heat would melt the engine and the rest of the ship. Even the ISS has sizable radiators. The Shuttle had deployable radiators in the form of the bay doors if my memory serves me correctly. Oddly enough the otherwise dumb Avatar films are…
The Mass Effect video games talk about cooling ships, with the warships glowing red from heat if they go too fast
Re: Starcloud
#47Apart from getting 16 sq. km of solar arrays and radiators into orbit - and without jumping to conclusions about whether this is a borderline scam - I can imagine 2 obvious showstoppers:
1) Space debris. This is proposal is several orders of magnitude larger than the biggest things in near-Earth orbits. Thus equally many orders more likely to be hit by, and create, space debris
2) Heat transport - this isn't my home turf, but I can't imagine building something lightweight enough to be launched, yet also capable of transferring enough heat away from the 5 GW core, without it melting/breaking
It's been a while since I read their whitepaper, but I don't recall either of those points being addressed.
Re: Starcloud
#48It's going to be fun constantly repairing all those solar arrays. We'll be destroying our planet with the rocket launches alone. But hey! The more ridiculous the idea, the greater the chance that Trump and his conspiracy-laden circle will embrace it. It works in science fiction movies and novels, why not in reality, duh. /s
Re: Starcloud
#49I have had people point out that building a Dyson sphere is pretty much a dumb idea, and there's no concievable reason why we would build one even if we could.
Now we have one - venture capital.
Re: Starcloud
#50pipe dream. this isnt going to happen before the AI bubble pops.
Then when it does there wont be a drive for it.