6 ms·

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

general1465 8mo ago
Well this explains why, but does not answer how to get rid of excessive heat in space.
- reactordev 8mo ago
  It’s a vacuum
  - floren 8mo ago
    Vacuum being so famous for not conducting heat that we use it to keep our coffee hot
    - reactordev 8mo ago
      which is why the whole idea of data centers in space is ridiculous.
      - floren 8mo ago
        I'm glad to realize we're in violent agreement, I thought you were implying cooling would be easy due to the vacuum!
        reactordev 8mo ago
        It can be solved with radiator fins and cold plates but yeah, it’s not an easy task.
- avmich 8mo ago
  What kind of the problem you're talking about compared to existing satellites? That is, all existing satellites generate power, and need to dissipate that power, and most of it goes to waste heat, and the satellites somehow do that successfully - what is the specific problem you're talking about, which can't be solved by the same means?
  - nilamo 8mo ago
    Are there many of those current satellites running gpus and actually generating lots of heat?
    - avmich 8mo ago
      Principally speaking, as much energy as satellite receives from solar panels it needs to send away - and often a lot of it is in the form of heat. So, the question is, how much energy is received in the first place. We currently have some quarter of megawatt of solar panels of ISS, so in principal - in principal - we know how to do this kind of scale per satellite. In practice we perhaps will have more smaller satellites which together aggregate the compute to the necessary lever and power to the corresponding level.
      - vel0city 8mo ago
        > We currently have some quarter of megawatt of solar panels of ISS It's average outbut is like half of that though. So something the size of the space station, a massive thing which is largely solar panels and radiators, can do like 120kW sustained. Like 1-2 racks of GPUs, assuming you used the entire power budget on GPUs. And we're going to build and launch millions of these.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 8mo ago
    Even the buses for giant communications satellites are still at the single digit kilowatt scale. The current state of the art in AI datacenters is 500+ kw per rack. So you're talking about an entirely different scale of power and needed cooling.
  - 8mo ago

general1465 8mo ago

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

reactordev 8mo ago
It’s a vacuum
- floren 8mo ago
  Vacuum being so famous for not conducting heat that we use it to keep our coffee hot
  - reactordev 8mo ago
    which is why the whole idea of data centers in space is ridiculous.
    - floren 8mo ago
      I'm glad to realize we're in violent agreement, I thought you were implying cooling would be easy due to the vacuum!
      - reactordev 8mo ago
        It can be solved with radiator fins and cold plates but yeah, it’s not an easy task.
avmich 8mo ago
What kind of the problem you're talking about compared to existing satellites? That is, all existing satellites generate power, and need to dissipate that power, and most of it goes to waste heat, and the satellites somehow do that successfully - what is the specific problem you're talking about, which can't be solved by the same means?
- nilamo 8mo ago
  Are there many of those current satellites running gpus and actually generating lots of heat?
  - avmich 8mo ago
    Principally speaking, as much energy as satellite receives from solar panels it needs to send away - and often a lot of it is in the form of heat. So, the question is, how much energy is received in the first place. We currently have some quarter of megawatt of solar panels of ISS, so in principal - in principal - we know how to do this kind of scale per satellite. In practice we perhaps will have more smaller satellites which together aggregate the compute to the necessary lever and power to the corresponding level.
    - vel0city 8mo ago
      > We currently have some quarter of megawatt of solar panels of ISS It's average outbut is like half of that though. So something the size of the space station, a massive thing which is largely solar panels and radiators, can do like 120kW sustained. Like 1-2 racks of GPUs, assuming you used the entire power budget on GPUs. And we're going to build and launch millions of these.
- jasonwatkinspdx 8mo ago
  Even the buses for giant communications satellites are still at the single digit kilowatt scale. The current state of the art in AI datacenters is 500+ kw per rack. So you're talking about an entirely different scale of power and needed cooling.
- 8mo ago