991–1000 of 1001 posts
Data centers in space make no sense because cooling things in space is insanely hard! Yeah, space is cold, but also you don't have access to large thermal masses with which to exchange heat, so the fact that space is cold does not help much. In space the only option for cooling is large radiators. If you had a data center in space you'd need enormous radiators -- much larger than the data center itself. (On Earth we…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_droplet_radiator
The author seems to have confused a few things. * They assume 1 satalite = 1 GPU. This is quite funny, actually. A single H200 floating in space with a solar panel and an antenna. In reality, a satellite would pack as many chips as the heat/power allows. A Starlink-sized satellite should be able to hold 40 or so chips. There's no reason why a larger satellitte couldn't hold, say, 1024. * They mention training, but sa…
Fair - my "millions" note is wrt SpaceX filing with the FCC to launch 1 million satellites, and the Google viability study deals with large constellations rather than monolithic stations. Public communications from companies purporting to go into orbital data centers have made every appearance that they think virtually all compute can go to space.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2514106-why-did-spacex-...
The French government issued a child porn warrant for the CEO and it isn't even a topic for discussion. That's what doesn't make sense to me. It's silly to talk about solar panel prices like reality matters at all to his cult of followers. It doesn't have to make sense. The less sense the better.
It's not a warrant, it is a summon for interview. That's actually very different: the way you phrased it suggests that there is a warrant for his arrest (mandat d'arrêt)...
Data centers in space make sense because its nigh impossible to build things terrestrially. NIMBYism is so out of control the largest solar array in the US in the middle of the mojave got cancelled because it would interfere with the view. "Just change the law" ok sure we'll get right on it.
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 problem is whether it's worth the launch costs for it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The solar labels are in the sun. Behind them they are in the shade.
In close proximity, and connected to metal structures radiating & conducting heat at 120 degrees. You still have to expel that heat somehow, and route it around the spacecraft core.
(For simplicity assume the side facing the earth is full reflective)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
How can the solar panel itself radiate heat when it's being heated up generating supplying power? Looking at pictures of the ISS there's radiators that look like they're there specifically to cool the solar panels. And even if viable, why would you just not cool using air down on earth? Water is used for cooling because it increases effectiveness significantly, but even a closed loop system with simple dry air heat e…
You don't have experience of being in space, so your "intuition" about cooling is worth literally nothing without formulas / numbers
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well a few considerations: - You have to size your cooling towers for your hottest hour. Doing this saves you no capital costs. - You barely have to run the fans on your cooling towers in the winter because the air is so cold. So often this also won’t save you much operating costs. - Already there is an essentially unlimited amount of so called “waste heat” from power plants and factories. Building district heating s…
I don't think I ever said it reduced capital cost. I agree (though you might be willing to take more risk on reducing redundancy e.g instead of 2+1 cooling towers you may be more willing to just buy 2). You cannot put a power station in the middle of a city centre, you can put a datacentre there. The main reason this isn't done more is that it's expensive to build heat network between the 'far out of town industrial…
You can't actually reduce redundancy because the loop can't reject any heat during the summer.
Let's say municipality or utility company, if it's privately owned. Either way, you are making an investment that will take decades to pay off (all those pipes) and it is completely worthless unless one particular datacenter continues to operate.