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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

#431

Post by elonmusk_tweet »

mercutio2 wrote: post #383
mr_toad wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the proposals are much much bigger than this. Five GW, and 16 square kilometres. It’s amusing that the article points out how large the radiators will have to be, when the proposals already include building giant radiators. Or that the satellites will have to be vastly larger than the ISS; surprise, surprise, that’s also part of the plan.

There’s a weird thing in discussions about space. Lots of people just don’t like space, it makes them think they’re being blasted with science fiction. So much criticism of space seems to fall into a few categories: 1. They think there were ever any serious engineers who thought STS was a good idea, (rather than congressional-pork, which is what it always was), and thus assume actual space technologists are basically…

Things like Golden Dome ruin it for everyone..

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#432

Post by ACCount37 »

wat10000 wrote: post #395
ACCount37 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good fucking luck. Starlink's ground infrastructure is absurdly decentralized. Laser links make that possible. Starlink can even bounce data P2P, from one client terminal to another.

How absurd is absurdly decentralized, here. A hundred ground stations? Thousands? Do they really have more than can be shut down by the FBI domestically and blown up by the USAF internationally? And how does decentralized ground infrastructure save you from a centralized executive?

Over one hundred ground stations, spread across the world. More on demand - Starlink allows one to use terminals as makeshift ground stations in a pinch.

Uncle Sam could bring Starlink down, probably. For anyone else, that would pretty much require WW3.

Executives don't matter as much as you think they do. No credible executive is going to cave to random death threats, and carrying them out would cause new executives.

Now, would SpaceX eventually become a shell of its former self without Musk calling the shots? Maybe. But if the shell you're worrying about is Starlink orbital shell, and the time you're worrying about is today and not in ten years? Killing Musk doesn't help you much.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#433

Post by davidgerard »

shagie wrote: post #430
davidgerard wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that was in 2020, and so here in 2025 MS has underwater data centres around the world! wait, no it doesn't. why would that be, d'you think

Because despite being more reliable and energy efficient the other costs associated with it were higher. It is one thing to dunk 14.3m L x 12.7m D in the ocean for a 240 kW setup in the ocean. It is another to scale that up to a "full scale" data center that is about 200x larger that has additional electrical supply challenges. Let's say that pod needs to be serviced once every two years. That means having a ship tha…

yep, just found Microsoft admitting precisely that in 2024: https://www.itpro.com/infrastructure/data-centres/microsoft-...

Cooling was great! Everything else sucked.

DCs in space will have all the stuff that sucked, but cooling will suck too.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#434

Post by davidgerard »

wmf wrote: post #118
skybrian wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably it didn't work well or they wouldn't have shelved it. But do you actually know about what happened or is this all based on your priors?

I don't think MS ever revealed enough information to answer that. For example, I haven't seen any explanation of how heat is transferred from the servers to the skin of the container. I can guess how they did it but I don't want to make any judgement based on guesses.

Cooling worked well, everything else sucked. https://www.itpro.com/infrastructure/data-centres/microsoft-...

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#435

Post by jauntywundrkind »

tylerhou wrote: post #186
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #74

One thing I haven't seen talked about at all: how quickly would space heat up? I presume Earth's gravity largely keeps the exosphere it has around it. With some modest fractional % lost year by year. There is a colossal vast volume out there! But given that there's so little matter up in space, what if any temperature rise would we expect from say a constant 1TW of heat being added?

The sun’s radiation hitting earth is 44,000 terawatts. I think we’re fine with an “extra” terawatt. (It’s not even extra, because it would be derived from the sun’s existing energy.) https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/135642main_b...

At sea-level there can be 1.225 kg/m^3 of particles. There's a lot of matter to absorb heat.

In the exosphere we have 1e-13 kg/m^3 of particles.

My point is that the exosphere while huge has an incredibly tiny thermal battery. I'm not convinced that, were we able to dump heat into it, that it really would be insignificant heating over time.

And there's little way for the articles here to cool down. There's no matter to transfer their energy to.

I guess the thing is, it doesn't matter. It seems like the exosphere is actually already >500 degrees: that after you leave the 80km menopause temperatures soar quickly, in what scant air is left. I was still using a model of thermal transfer. But the only cooling possible is passive radiative cooling, is to glow your energy away. Some of this will find other exospheric particles to hit & excite more, but they're already incredibly energetic up there, and there's just not many particles at all, so perhaps a lot of that radiation might escape the exosphere without collision. Again my mistake: thermal transfer is simply not that relevant (aside some shielding against these particles in vulnerable spots), it's all passive radiation being used to cool.

It would still be interesting to me to have some guestimates for what the current energy balance of the exosphere is. What is heating it, how much, and where/how-much is it able to dissipate its energy?

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#436

Post by vpribish »

datavirtue wrote: post #346
jeltz wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because to do that and not ruin myself I need to know roughly when the double will burst. Just knowing it is a bubble is not enough.

Most investors can time this aspect of the market accurately enough. It's tough for these people to stand by and watch profit being left on the table for a year or two, though. So they get back in, seeing how long they can leave their hand on the got plate. Myself, I made the decision to go to cash a while ago, right before the recent AI pullback. Things were going great for a week until I started seeing all that mon…

It is not at all true that "Most investors can time this aspect of the market". This is laughably, absurdly, wrong - as if most people could predict the future. Here's a little advice I sincerely pray you accept : don't trade options.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#438

Post by more_corn »

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.

Elon is 100% planning to put significant ai compute in space. He is probably planning to do it in a decentralized way.

He has the launch platform (spacex), he has the existing power and data infrastructure (starlink), he has the demand side. (Xai)

Will he succeed? That is different question. Is it possible to add enough power generation and thermal radiative capacity to starlink nodes to bother? Don’t know, but an analysis that fails to answer those two specific engineering questions is useless.

Re: Datacenters in space aren't going to work

#440

Post by wat10000 »

ACCount37 wrote: post #432
wat10000 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How absurd is absurdly decentralized, here. A hundred ground stations? Thousands? Do they really have more than can be shut down by the FBI domestically and blown up by the USAF internationally? And how does decentralized ground infrastructure save you from a centralized executive?

Over one hundred ground stations, spread across the world. More on demand - Starlink allows one to use terminals as makeshift ground stations in a pinch. Uncle Sam could bring Starlink down, probably. For anyone else, that would pretty much require WW3. Executives don't matter as much as you think they do. No credible executive is going to cave to random death threats, and carrying them out would cause new executives…

You think Musk would refuse, and give up his freedom or even his life instead of complying with a US government demand? The point isn’t to actually kill him. The point is that you can, and you use that to force compliance.
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