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Data centers in space makes no sense

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Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#651

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ehnto wrote: post #417
scottyah wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean definitely, and they're not shy about admitting it. They see cool stuff in imagination-land, think it's cool, and work to make it a reality. Many people have worked to make the fantastical things shown in Star Trek.

We're about as close as we have ever been to a holo-deck with VR/AR right now, but it is notable that it is still a fringe technology. I think basically no one cares about space data centres except the rule of cool enthusiasts in the technosphere.

The harsh reality of economics and demand is hitting them. For years, Musk's ideas were funded by an overvalued Tesla stock and stupendous amounts of investor money, and currently it's being double down on with the amount of money being poured into AI and its necessary hardware.

But the demand / economic viability just isn't there. VR is cool but it's not mainstream. "Metaverse" exists and some companies are making good money off of it (Roblox, Fortnite, MMOs, etc), but nobody wanted Facebook's multi-billion-dollar-invested version of it because they just don't get it. I really hope all this nonsense collapses sooner rather than later and we go back to realistic and viable spending.

Large investments don't translate to results.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#652

Post by ww520 »

emkoemko wrote: post #95
ww520 wrote: post #73

Space offers some unique benefits that enable computing that’s impossible or very hard to do on earth. E.g. Super conducting computing is possible, which can be thousands times to millions times faster than current CPU while using very little energy. When the satellite moves in the shade of the earth, temperature drops significantly. It can be low enough to enable superconducting. When the satellite moves under the s…

i don't understand? you won't insulate the craft from the sun? and you expect the craft to get rid of its heat just from being behind the earth for a moment?

When did I say no insulation? If it took only one moment for the satellite to fly by behind the whole earth, its speed is so great that it would be flung out of the solar system.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#653

Post by haspok »

mike_hearn wrote: post #582
elamje wrote: post #353

I 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.

It's a physics problem, as others pointed out, but even if we take it as another "just an engineering problem", have a look at the Hyperloop. Which is similarly just a long vacuum tube, and inside is like an air hockey table, not that big a deal, right?...

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#654

Post by Findeton »

bendews wrote: post #543
spoaceman7777 wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He goes on about putting a mass driver on the moon for ultra-low-cost space launches. His plan here clearly hinges around using robots to create a fully-automated GPU manufacturing and launch facility on the moon. Not launching any meaningful number from earth. Raises some big questions about whether there are actually sufficient materials for GPU manufacture on the moon... But, whatever the case, the current pitch o…

If any single country tried to create a whole production chain to single-handedly manufacture modern computer equipment it would be on the order of decades to see any result. Doing it on the moon is just not realistic this century, maybe the next one. Although i don't think the economics would ever work out.

Do you acknowledge how much change was there in the XX century? How can you probably make such predictions with such confidence?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#656

Post by chairmansteve »

gpt5 wrote: post #235
lancewiggs wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exiting the 5th best social network and the 10th (or worse) best AI company and selling them to a decent company. It probably increases Elon's share of the combined entity. It delivers on a promise to investors that he will make money for them, even as the underlying businesses are lousy.

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…

A typical desktop/tower PC will consume 400 watts. So 12 PC's equals 1 starlink satellite.

A single server in a data center will consume 5-10 kW.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#657

Post by chairmansteve »

lancewiggs wrote: post #177
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…

It's exiting the 5th best social network and the 10th (or worse) best AI company and selling them to a decent company. It probably increases Elon's share of the combined entity. It delivers on a promise to investors that he will make money for them, even as the underlying businesses are lousy.

Elon's always looking for another Brooklyn Bridge to sell to the rubes...

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#658

Post by tyg13 »

rockemsockem wrote: post #487
adastra22 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story here is even simpler. SpaceX is going public this year. Elon made a monumentally shitty investment in Twitter and then poured a stupid amount of money into xAI at the peak of the cycle. By having SpaceX buy xAI, he gets to swap worthless shares in that company for more SpaceX liquidity. Simple as that.

Really seems silly to think that the guy with $800 billion is spending most of his time maximizing his money.

Doesn't it just make sense though? How else would he have gotten 800 billion dollars?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#659

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

sheepscreek wrote: post #29
DougN7 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is there no cooling necessary?

Space is cold - 4 K. Superconductors.

Space is not cold. Space is not hot either. Temperature is a property of matter. Empty space does not have a temperature. It is also a perfect insulator for conduction and convection, and as for radiation: it's a problem because of the sun heating up objects via its radiation.

This is the basics, I'm not an expert. But I don't think that you have anything useful at all to say here.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#660

Post by nosianu »

adastra22 wrote: post #450
greengrassi wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they talk about "space" they are, right now, talking about the moon. Which has some gravity. They are putting the data centers on the moon. And the satellites are lunar satellites not earth-orbit satellites. Lonestar physical data center payload landed on the moon in Feb 2025 and Sidus space developing the lunar satellites.

They are not. xAI/SpaceX is talking about millions of satellites in sun-synchronous orbit.

Yeah, the cost of doing it on the moon would be even more astronomical. Then there also is the three second of round-trip latency to consider (ca. 2.6 s just the signal, but processing adds a bit more).
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