I had a conversation with a colleague of mine about this. He believed that Musk’s decision to merge xAI and SpaceX was truly because of the potential of datacenters in space. I was unable to convince him that the logistics of this would be a nightmare and that this was just a way to make the Twitter buyout SpaceX’s problem.
People that deal in computers think reality works like computers: just upgrade your drivers and download the reality you want.
It’s the Elon’s believe actually.
It’s such a hilariously dumb idea I hope the tech bros sink millions into it.
Lets make a data center we can’t maintain, upgrade or access for any practical reason. Waiting for the suggestions to put them in geostationary orbits so that way their latency is even higher but going to struggle staying powered when in Earth’s shadow. Or get put in the Earth-Sun L1 so they always have solar power but now have to have significant more radiators on top of even MORE latency beyond beyond the moon’s orbit.
I’d rather we just seize the wealth they have stolen from the working people of the world and use it for something we actually need. Like healthcare, or reducing carbon emissions.
But futurism bro science idiots see all space adventurism as equal. They see billionaires wasting resources on ideas hashed out with an LLM during a ketamine bender as just as worthwhile and scientifically valid as a probe to deep space or a rover to Mars.
Yea honestly, orbital data centers are the dumbest shit I’ve heard during this bubble, and a huge indication of peak bubble hype.
The bubble is like this at this point:
LOL LOL you CANNOT cool something like that in space. The entire concept is flawed.
Are there actually people who think this is a good idea that are not in a position to make money off it?
Yes. All the retail investors in SpaceX that will be left to hold the bag.
My aunt and uncle are Elon fans (yes, even after his fucking Nazi salute) and have said orbital data centers are a good idea.
They have money, and my uncle is usually pretty smart, so I’m not sure what the fuck is happening.
I don’t know you, and I certainly don’t know your aunt and uncle, but I would generally assume in Nazi situations that “even after” probably means “particularly after” even if they don’t admit it.
It’s technically possible that all the starlink satellites have some arm socs. But the case only makes economic sense if the demand for compute outstrips zoning permit for data centers.
If you sell rockets and satellites, then data centers in space sound like a perfect idea to increase demand with other people’s money.
Eliminating heat is like one of the hardest space problems 🦙
Seems to me that maintenance would be significant.
Maybe but also maybe they would hire my uncle and then he could go to space which would be pretty cool.
I skimmed the title for a sec and thought “what’s wrong with orbital stations?” before realizing the utter stupidity that graced my vision.
Do we have a way to transfer heat into rock, because I’m thinking lunar data centers.
what is metal if not just concentrated bits of specific rock?
🤘
Imagine launching that scale of infrastructure, loaded full of Nvidia chips that’ll be outdated in like 2 years.
If they build a data center on land and an identical one floating on the ocean, what is the difference in how much heat they emit when I throw thermite grenades at them?
I’m far more concerned with the suggested floating datacenters. Just dumping more waste heat into the ocean. WCGW.
That space data center might end up dumping more waste into the oceans with all thise launches but certainly more into our atmosphere.
don’t need to think much about this crackpot idea.
where would the heat dissipate? that just ends this topic.
Via radiation into space. All you need is a radiator, the weight of a battleship (or worse). Yes, the idea is crazy.
Around or less than twice the size of the ISS radiator.
That gives you a heat rejection capacity of less than 140 kW (mind you, that is total heat rejection, incl. heat from the sun, support systems etc., only a part of that can be used to cool servers) So you settle for laughably low compute to keep radiator size somewhat reasonable, yet still massive and heavy.
The ISS is rated for 84kw but is run max at 70kw, probably for margin of error and whatnot since its for human saftey, which these will not be. They can also
probablyrun hotter, (edit reducing the size).The compute is 125kw avg per dish. 150 peak.
You do need margins not just for humans.
Building something the size of an (unmanned) space station for a single server rack, yes, it makes no sense. The energy needed to lift all that stuff into orbit, the comically inefficient cooling and never mind the issues of impact damage and radiation and inability to do any service (without huge effort) if things go wrong, all make this a pretty irrational idea.
Just put that server rack in Iceland with geothermal power and closed loop heat pump. But then the tech oligarchs would have to comply with laws and that is probably the reason they want it up in space. There surely is no technical reason for it.
Data / hardware sovereignty is a real thing, you can’t put all your data centers in another county, but building them in Texas vs Vermont/Alaska or elsewhere is stupid.
A data center in space would be damn near impossible to cool.
What’s sad is that Stanley did a remarkable job of putting a vacuum flask in the literal hands of millions of Americans. It shouldn’t be hard at all for everyone to figure out why this is the case, but here we are.
