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Data centers in space makes no sense
601–610 of 1001 posts
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#602[deleted]
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't quite believe this. Is it really better than just using solar panels to run a heat pump?
> Our core innovation is a radiative cooling material that we’ve combined with a panel system to improve the efficiency of any vapor-compression based cooling system A heat pump is a “ vapor-compression based cooling system” so that tech is an addition-to not an instead-of. Whether it’s better probably depends on how expensive the additional efficiency is in practice. > SkyCool’s Panels save 2x – 3x as much energy as…
That's very hard to believe. Radiative cooling is really bad compared to any kind of fan in front of aluminum fins.
Air itself is an isolator, there is a reason you need to shove in fresh air to take on more energy from the heat source.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#604I 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…
Its very simple, xAI needs money to win the AI race, so best option is to attach to Elon’s moneybank (spacex) to get cash without dilution
I’m not certain spacex is generating much cash right now ?
Starship development is consuming billions. F9 & Starlink are probably profitable ?
I’d say this is more shifting of the future burden of xAI to one of his companies he knows will be a hit stonk when it goes public, where enthusiasm is unlikely to be dampened by another massive cash drain on the books.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#605Whatever it is it’s not driven by sense or even feasibility of data centers in space.
To me it looks like the next Musk’s grift. Remember Mars? Have you heard about it recently? He threw it to the Internet and everyone got excited for a minute. Then nerds did quick math and it didn’t make any sense. And so everyone forgot about Mars. This is the same. Hype everyone up for a week or two to inflate stock before the merger/purchase/IPO/whatever. That is all.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#606AST Spacemobile is successfully deploying cell towers in space; to compete with Elons Starlink. Not to mention ASTS is collaborating with American Tower, Google, ATT, Verizon, Nokia, and other big dogs for this venture. Now a DC is magnitudes different then a cell tower/satellite but hey .. if the RoI is there, it can be done
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#607Keep talking like that and people will colonize space
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#608This sentence proves the author has no ability for logical thinking: Data centers in space only make sense if they are cost effective relative to normal data centers. I too don't think it's currently a sensible solution. But the author completely unable to make a proper case. For instance, just to refute that one claim, there are many reasons to do it in space even at an cost. Space-based data centers provide an off-…
Essentially all of your concerns concerns can be mitigated by building somewhere else.
Worried about natural disasters? Build some place less prone to natural disasters.
Worried about the strain on local communities? Build some place more remote.
Worried about energy availability? Build near a nuclear power plant or hydroelectric power station.
Worried about hostile governments? Don't build data centers within the territories of hostile governments. (If you consider every country a hostile government, that is a you-problem.)
For the cost of building a data center in space, you could instead build a second (or third, or fourth, ...) data center somewhere else.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#609I was talking to someone about this the other day. I was part of a team at NASA that developed a cooling system for the ISS and this whole premise makes no sense to me. 1. Getting things to space is incredibly expensive 2. Ingress/egress are almost always a major bottleneck - how is bandwidth cheaper in space? 3. Chips must be “Rad-hard” - that is do more error correcting from ionizing radiation - there were entire t…
It sounds hard but it shouldn't not make sense. 1. Solving cost of launching mass has been the entire premise of SpaceX since day one and they have the track record. 2. Ingress/egress aren't at all bottlenecks for inferencing. The bytes you get before you max out a context window are trivial, especially after compression. If you're thinking about latency, chat latencies are already quite high and there's going to be…
> There is probably plenty of scope to optimize space radiators. It was never a priority until now and is "just" an engineering problem.
Well, it's a physics problem. The engineering solution is possibly not cost efficient. I'd put a lot of money that it isn't.
Re: Data centers in space makes no sense
#610Whatever it is it’s not driven by sense or even feasibility of data centers in space. To me it looks like the next Musk’s grift. Remember Mars? Have you heard about it recently? He threw it to the Internet and everyone got excited for a minute. Then nerds did quick math and it didn’t make any sense. And so everyone forgot about Mars. This is the same. Hype everyone up for a week or two to inflate stock before the mer…
Exactly, Musk is just playing pump and dump with industrial projects.