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Data centers in space makes no sense

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Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#91

Post by iancmceachern »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #77
general1465 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the issue is that a lot of people believe that space is cold. If you will ask Google/Gemini what is a temperature of space, it will tell you: The average temperature of deep space is approximately -270.45°C or 2.73 Kelvin), which is just above absolute zero. This baseline temperature is set by the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiatio... Which is absolute nonsense, because vacuum has no temperature.

I saw a news personality say that space is cold and that solves a big problem with datacenters as justification for why it made sense.

Space is cold because there isn't anything there.

There is also no matter to wick the heat away.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#92

Post by mrcwinn »

I can assure this author: strapping a company that lights money on fire (today, maybe not tomorrow) to a cash flow enterprise makes the IPO harder, not easier, in the absence of credible plan. The market speculates, but it’s not being completely irrational. I’d actually be surprised if we didn’t have factories or data centers in space one day.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#93

Post by reactordev »

general1465 wrote: post #61
Keyframe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very confused by this plan. How about now? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3ex92557jo

Well this explains why, but does not answer how to get rid of excessive heat in space.

It’s a vacuum

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#94

Post by __loam »

xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #89

You guys clearly didn't read the full blog post where Musk mentions lunar mining. They're going to put an ASML machine on the moon and turns regolith into chips and solar panels automatically. Literally free compute

I can't even tell what's sarcasm anymore lol.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#95

Post by emkoemko »

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?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#96

Post by AlexandrB »

emchammer wrote: post #78
Mordisquitos wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I would go so far as to assert that, of all the ideas that have ever been proposed in the history of humanity, data centres in space is most certainly one of them.

Just ask this scientician.

Uhhhh

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#97

Post by grim_io »

ozim wrote: post #75
grim_io wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I thought Musk's fans are all about digging holes in the ground. The flamethrower fumes might have caused temporary amnesia.

To say so I am not a Musk fan - I am sci-fi fan and I make imaginary/silly stuff up on my own. I also like reading how people argue with not what I wrote but with what they imagined I wrote.

It was not my intention to single you out, my apologies.

There is nothing wrong to imagine anything you like. But if you do it as a CEO, i personally consider that as fraud. Guess I'm weird and old-fashioned like that.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#98

Post by mhh__ »

palmotea wrote: post #7
Starman_Jones wrote: post #3

Very confused by this plan. Data centers on Earth are struggling with how to get rid of waste heat. It's really, really hard to get rid of waste heat in space. That seems to be about the worst possible place to put a data center.

That's not Elon's problem. He's an ideas guy. Data centers in space is definitely an idea.

Yeah he only micromanages (look at his old blog) every detail he has time for at an extremely successful aerospace engineering company, just an ideas guy.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#99

Post by triceratops »

xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #89

You guys clearly didn't read the full blog post where Musk mentions lunar mining. They're going to put an ASML machine on the moon and turns regolith into chips and solar panels automatically. Literally free compute

I was skeptical until you mentioned this. Now I'm onboard

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#100

Post by reactordev »

shetaye wrote: post #48
Bender wrote: post #2

AI data-centers use upwards of 100MW. The biggest solar panels in space could produce around 240KW. When they speak of AI data-centers in space what do they actually mean in realistic non theoretical terms and where are the materials for this coming from? If the AI data-center used only 10MW then each could have two redundant SMR's assuming the cooling challenges have been worked out but then we could have nuclear re…

I assume the idea is to have the entire constellation be the data center in question. Laser back haul transceiver bandwidth is in the same order of magnitude of rack-to-rack bandwidths [1][2]. I could see each sat being a rack and the entire mesh being a cluster. [1] https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/starlinks-inter-satellite-la... (and this is two years ago!) [2] https://resources.nvidia.com/en-us-accelerated-networki…

This is how Starlink works however, you would need orders of magnitude more compute than those router pucks. Orders of magnitude more power needs unless you combined a nuclear reactor to it. It’s just such a fever dream at this stage that he’s really doing it to muddy accounting and consolidate debts from Grok failures.
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