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Data centers in space makes no sense

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Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#841

Post by danans »

rishabhjain1198 wrote: post #838

> Data centers in space only make sense if they are cost effective relative to normal data centers. This statement is actually completely false. The bottleneck is not cost of building data centers, but the energy accessible on the planet. How much we're willing to pay for increasing that is currently very unclear, but it's far more than the current cost of building a terrestrial data center. As Jensen Huang famously…

> This statement is actually completely false. The bottleneck is not cost of building data centers, but the energy accessible on the planet.

How much of energy will it take to launch the same amount of compute, connectivity, and PV to power it into space?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#843

Post by drtz »

killerstorm wrote: post #663
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…

People did the calculation: radiative cooling requires smaller surface area than solar panels. So, basically, a solar panel itself can radiate heat. Have you done a calculation yourself?

The same radiative (radiant) cooling on Earth works almost just as well, but without the cost of a rocket launch.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#844

Post by valec »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #677
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…

You can't exchange heat with vacuum If you put a pipe with hot gas inside, in space, it will get colder by convection. Blow air through the pipe.

ok. your pipe is full. now what

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#845

Post by EFreethought »

fwip wrote: post #288
scottyah wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Write some books with good ideas then so future human-robots will be inspired to make your dreams into reality.

Unfortunately, these guys are only excited about building the Torment Nexus.

From the classic sci-fi novel "Do Not Create The Torment Nexus".

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#846

Post by [deleted] »

titzer wrote: post #747
bravetraveler wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you're better served by editorials for opinion, journalism should be comparatively rigorous. "Musk says" is not "plans/hopes"

I can't tell what you're actually saying. Is "Musk says Moon is made of blue cheese" as a title, without pointing out the fact that the moon is not made of blue cheese a kind of "rigorous" reporting? Dealing in hallways gossip is not the job we granted the press extra constitutional protections for.

[deleted]

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#847

Post by diabllicseagull »

mike_hearn wrote: post #800
haspok wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?...

Musk's companies never tried to make the hyperloop, they never even started on it. SpaceX is a bit different.

so spacex worked on an orbital data center?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#848

Post by arjie »

constantius wrote: post #629
arjie wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's awfully kind of you to say! I added a section to the Main Page listing a couple of ones that people have mentioned to me before, though it's a bit of a cluttered page so I doubt it works as it stands. A few things I think of more frequently than they affect my life are: * https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Abolish_The_First_Lady - arguing that the FLOTUS role shouldn't exist * https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Upwa…

Thanks, I'll read through those (and Citogenesis was one of the two that I stumbled upon!). I find a lot of value in observing out-of-the-box/second-order reasoning, your blog fits the bill!

Thank you for your kind words :)

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#849

Post by osigurdson »

torginus wrote: post #818
osigurdson wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect Musk has a workable plan of some sort, realistically. Clearly, the one thing that is available in space is an abundance of square meters. There is no need whatsoever to conserve space at sufficient orbit. It is a little counter intuitive as we are so used to needing to conserve all the things. Power input and heat radiation both scale with area so maybe there is some way to achieve this at scale. For instan…

The rumor I heard is that Musk's big issue with SpaceX was that he was only able to employ US citizens with a security clearance, as per the limitations of a rocket company, which he has rallied against multiple times. One of the motivations behind this whole thing could be that he could make a way for foreign talent to work on space projects without the necessary government signoff.

Would that really be that much of an unlock?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#850

Post by whiplash451 »

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…

Not related to heat, but a com satellite is built from extremely durable HW/SW that's been battle-tested to run flawlessly over years with massive MTBF numbers.

A data center is nowhere near that and requires constant physical interventions. How do they suggest to address this?

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