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Data centers in space makes no sense

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Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#511

Post by afiori »

ianburrell wrote: post #424
bartread wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this and more. For example: quite apart from the fact of how much rocket fuel is it going to take to haul all this shit up there at the kind of scale that would make these space data centres even remotely worthwhile. I'm not against space travel or space exploration, or putting useful satellites in orbit, or the advancement of science or anything like that - quite the opposite in fact, I love all this stuff. B…

Starship is fueled with methane (natural gas) and liquid oxygen which aren't toxic. It does produce a lot of CO2 which is a problem with lots of flights.

IIRC the methane is produced at launch site with considerable pollution

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#512

Post by adastra22 »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #470
adastra22 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confidently incorrect. Even Starlink uses rad-hardened CPUs. Redundant error correction is only really an option on launch hardware that only spends minutes in space. Note that on modern hardware cosmic rays permanently disable circuits, not mere bitflips.

> You are confidently incorrect. No, he's not. Dragon is using CotS, non rad-hardened CPUs. And it's rated to carry humans to space. > AWST: So, NASA does not require SpaceX to use radiation-hardened computer systems on the Dragon? John Muratore: No, as a matter of fact NASA doesn't require it on their own systems, either. I spent 30 years at NASA and in the Air Force doing this kind of work. My last job was chief en…

> Dragon is using CotS, non rad-hardened CPUs. And it's rated to carry humans to space.

Those are not independent facts. They put the hardware inside, behind the radiation shielding they use to keep the astronauts safe. It's why regular old IBM laptops work on the Space Station too. That kind of shielding is going to blow your mass budget if you use it on these satellites.

SpaceX, which prefers COTS components when it can use them, still went with AMD Versal chips for Starlink. Because that kind of high performance, small process node hardware doesn't last long in space otherwise (phone SoC-based cubesats in LEO never lasted more than a year, and often only a month or so).

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#513

Post by reppap »

recursive wrote: post #187
idontwantthis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One man able to put a data center worth of mass in orbit is one man able to crash a datacenter worth of mass into Earth anywhere he wants.

Not a given. Re enter the atmosphere. Sure. Avoid vaporization? Much harder problem.

I think it's actually the other way around, satellites need to be specifically designed to burn up fast in the atmosphere. See for example the warnings about space debris from Chinese satellites not designed with this in mind.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#514

Post by energy123 »

beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

What in particular is wrong/misleading in the Starcloud whitepaper, then?

https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#515

Post by FabHK »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #453
phendrenad2 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people underestimate how quickly heat radiates to space. A rock in orbit around Earth will experience 250F/125C on the side facing the Sun, and -173C/-280F on the other side. The ability to rotate an insulating shield toward the sun means you're always radiating.

I think you may be overestimating how quickly this happens and underestimating how much surface area that rock has. Given no atmosphere, the fact that the rock with 1/4 the radius of Earth has a temperature differential of only 300C between the hot side and the cold side, there's not a lot of radiation happening. In deep space (no incident power) you need roughly 2000 sq meters of surface area per megawatt if you wan…

First, thanks for your knowledgeable input.

Second, are you saying that we basically need to have a radiator as big (approximately) as the solar panels?

That is a lot, but it does sound manageable, in the sense that it approximately doubles what we require anyway for power.

So, not saying that it’s easy or feasible, but saying that cooling then seems “just” as difficult as power, not insurmountably more difficult. (Note that the article lists cooling, radiation, latency, and launch costs as known hard problems, but not power.)

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#516

Post by adastra22 »

rockemsockem wrote: post #488
adastra22 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> micro droplet technology Intentionally causing Kessler Syndrome? > A hybrid architecture could dramatically change the heat budget: + optical connections reduce heat + photonic chips (Lightmatter and Q.ANT) + processing-in-memory might reduce energy requirement by 10-50 times It would also make ground-based computation more efficient by the same amount. That does nothing to make space datacenters make sense.

Kessler syndrome is only a problem if the satellites are in LEO. They don't have to be.

They do have to be if they want to be approved by the FCC.

And btw Kessler syndrome applies to any orbital band. You've got the logic backwards. Kessler syndrome is usually only considered a threat for LEO because that's where most of the satellites are. But if you're throwing million(s) of satellites into orbit, it becomes an issue at whatever orbital height you pick.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#517

Post by yawniek »

I think what many people miss is that energy became far less location dependent if you put compute next to its generation. The latency for token generation is not so important. So the ratios between energy consumed, bandwidth and latency would in theory favour building dark token factories in remote but optimal locations. But i guess construction and logistics are an issue.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#518

Post by thebolt00 »

phs318u wrote: post #485
gpt5 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused about the level of conversation here. Can we actually run the math on heat dissipation and feasibility? A Starlink satellite uses about 5K Watts of solar power. It needs to dissipate around that amount (+ the sun power on it) just to operate. There are around 10K starlink satellites already in orbit, which means that the Starlink constellation is already effectively equivalent to a 50 Mega-watt (in a rou…

Because 10K satellites have a FAR greater combined surface area than a single space-borne DC would. Stefan-Boltzman law: ability to radiate heat increase to the 4th power of surface area.

It's linear to surface area, but 4th power to temperature.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#520

Post by mlyle »

murderfs wrote: post #279
space_fountain wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like this. Everything about operating a datacenter in space is more difficult than it is to operate one on earth. 1. The capital costs are higher, you have to expend tons of energy to put it into orbit 2. The maintenance costs are higher because the lifetime of satellites is pretty low 3. Refurbishment is next to impossible 4. Networking is harder, either you are ok with a relatively small datacenter or you have…

> The maintenance costs are higher because the lifetime of satellites is pretty low Presumably they're planning on doing in-orbit propellant transfer to reboost the satellites so that they don't have to let their GPUs crash into the ocean...

Another significant factor is that radiation makes things worse.

Ionizing radiation disrupts the crystalline structure of the semiconductor and makes performance worse over time.

High energy protons randomly flip bits, can cause latchup, single event gate rupture, destroy hardware immediately, etc.

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