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Data centers in space makes no sense

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Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#871

Post by the_real_cher »

notaustinpowers wrote: post #866
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 links his middling AI company and his failing social media company with the only company that can send the United States to space. X failing and can't pay its debts? Welp, better give him a government bailout otherwise no more rockets for you!

This exactly. His other companies are failing. He links the shitty companies with the only one working.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#872

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

mbesto wrote: post #633
TurdF3rguson wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10th (or worse) best AI company You might only care about coding models, but text is dominating the market share right now and Grok is the #2 model for that in arena rankings.

Arena rankings, lol. Openrouter is a decent proxy for real world use and Grok is currently 8% of the market: https://openrouter.ai/rankings (and is less than 7% of TypeScript programming)

5th place company or better in every chart on that page except 'fastest models' suggests that parent is still right to criticize the 10th place characterization.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#873

Post by catoc »

fsckboy wrote: post #870
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…

> i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot e.g. the lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink cold too

Yes but in this case the lack-of-a-thing keeps GPUs hot

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#874

Post by EGreg »

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…

The ideal would be to park the data centers at the lagrange point behind the Earth in its umbra, so they don't need to dissipate direct solar heat.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#875

Post by jmalicki »

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…

"But even if we stipulate that radiation, cooling, latency, and launch costs are all solved, other fundamental issues still make orbital data centers, at least as SpaceX understands them, a complete fantasy. "

I'm pretty his point is that while cooling is an impossibility, it is not the only one!

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#876

Post by fwipsy »

fsckboy wrote: post #870
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…

> i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot e.g. the lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink cold too

At risk of stating the obvious - computers produce heat. "Keeping them cool" really means dissipating that heat. Insulating them will cause them to get hotter.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#877

Post by gwbas1c »

tgtweak wrote: post #767

The crux of it is that radiative cooling in space is dependent on exposed surface, not total surface area like a radiator or heatsink on earth - this means if you just put an existing finned heatsink in space it would radiate most of it's heat back to itself - the only net cooling you'd have is the amount that can radiate outwards without hitting itself. For a benchmark - the IIS uses about 4500sqft (420 sqm) of radi…

Makes me wonder:

Back in the early 1990s I read some children's futurist book that suggested that we might send solar panels to space that would then beam energy via microwaves to the surface. The book was more fantasy than science, so I took it with a huge grain of salt and appreciated it for its entertainment value.

But do you think schemes that try to direct solar energy to the surface are more practical then running datacenters in space?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#878

Post by fsckboy »

catoc wrote: post #873
fsckboy wrote: post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot e.g. the lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink cold too

Yes but in this case the lack-of-a-thing keeps GPUs hot

people who do understand thermodynamics will already understand the problem, but innocent people who don't understand thermodynamics should not be misled by poorly chosen examples presented as proof.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#879

Post by dfabulich »

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…

In 2024, Starcloud posted their plans to "solve" the cooling problem. https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf

> As conduction and convection to the environment are not available in space, this means the data center will require radiators capable of radiatively dissipating gigawatts of thermal load. To achieve this, Starcloud is developing a lightweight deployable radiator design with a very large area - by far the largest radiators deployed in space - radiating primarily towards deep space...

They claim they can radiate "633.08 W / m^2". At that rate, they're looking at square kilometers of radiators to dissipate gigawatts of thermal load, perhaps hectares of radiators.

They also claim that they can "dramatically increase" heat dissipation with heat pumps.

So, there you have it: "all you have to do" is deploy a few hectares of radiators in space, combined with heat pumps that can dissipate gigawatts of thermal load with no maintenance at all over a lifetime of decades.

This seems like the sort of "not technically impossible" problem that can attract a large amount of VC funding, as VCs buy lottery tickets that the problem can be solved.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#880

Post by jtrn »

pointlessone wrote: post #578
jtrn wrote: post #564

This 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-…

While it’s true that there are no floods or earthquakes in space it’s not exactly a safe place to be. Radiation and cosmic rays become a much greater threat. Shielding provided by the atmosphere would have to be replaced. You also underestimate the cooling problem. The fact that space is cold doesn’t mean it’s easy to cool things off in space. On earth the main cooling strategy is to transfer heat through direct cont…

I am not saying it's viable or not. I'm saying that the statement the author put forward for why it's Absolutely not viable, is not valid.

That's why I said I actually don't think it's realistic in my post. He might be right, but some of his reasons are wrong.

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