8 ms·

I dunno if it's that clear cut. In space with a shadowless orbit you get 5x more solar energy per day than the sunniest place on earth. And it's always on, so y

I dunno if it's that clear cut. In space with a shadowless orbit you get 5x more solar energy per day than the sunniest place on earth. And it's always on, so you don't need batteries. Also, the lack of gravity and weather means that the structures can be a lot more brittle - I imagine something like a gpu on the back of a large thin film solar panel, where the panel also acts as heatsink. Could be pretty cheap!

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
lukan 4mo ago
Yes, you get much more radiation from the sun and other sources. How do you do cooling? Radiators the size of small moons? Also hard radiation is not something transistors like.
- svantana 4mo ago
  The joint solar panel + computer system will be pretty close to an ideal black body, which near earth will have an average temperature of about 10°C. And radiation is an issue, but starlink seems to work so I don't see why this wouldn't.
  - lukan 4mo ago
    Starlink does not need so much energy as a datacenter.
    - svantana 4mo ago
      I don't follow your logic. I mentioned starlink as an example of transistors (and solar panels) in space dealing with radiation.
      - lukan 4mo ago
        Well I was talking about heat. But regarding radiation, there is a long history of transistors in space dealing with radiation. But ... there is also a whole science how to deal with making it reliable: answer, expensive redundancy. And about starlink .. as far as I know the fail quite often but work, because of redundancy. So they get replaced. If you want to ship GPU's to the orbit, then this surely works somehow, if you are willing to replace them often, which is expensive. Or you shield them, but then you will need to get up heavy shields. In general, of course computers work in space, but it is not cheap.
  - AntiUSAbah 4mo ago
    Of course it works, the question is how this would look like and if its financial feasable. You make a H100, ship it to a space dock, load it onto a rocket (rocket requires fuuel, the rocket, etc.) send it up, deploy it, monitor it live 24/7, have means of adjusting its orbit, if it breaks, its immediade full loss, otherwise it will degenerate faster in space than on earth, now it needs a high speed up/downlink to do anything reasonable which also requires a base station. The base station has to track this satelite. One H100 costs 40k, consumes 700 Watt peak and need probably at a minimum 5 square meter of area for cooling and solar. The colossus datacenter from musk has 250.000 of these. Now you have to track 250.000 single satelites, you have to coordinate the communication between the, up and downlink to earth. 250.000 * 5 square meter of area. This alone increases the potential debris in space. And this is ONE 300 MW Datacenter replacement. ONE.
    - kamaal 4mo ago
      Everything you wrote is some definition of hard, but all doable. None of this is purely in the territory of 'known' impossible(like FTL travel). Now different people have different points where they quit when things get hard. This is true for even everyday things in life. Quitting triggers exist for people at various points in the ladder. The end of ladder and path both exist, its upto you to decide if you wish to continue climbing, or give up and quit. Your mileage may vary.
      - AntiUSAbah 4mo ago
        My problem is not the doing thing but the economy of it. We are nowere near any resource limitation on planet earth for AI Datacenters. Musk sells this story because he has Starship which needs payload to make financial sense. The payload doesn't exist so he inventes DC in Space. Its the same thing as SpaceX buying Tesla Cybertrucks. His old colossus datacenter is a 300MW Datacenter he now rents out to Anthropic because he doesn't even need his own compute. Colossus DC is probably 10x cheaper than his whole Space AI DC Story and will be for a long time.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 4mo ago
        > Everything you wrote is some definition of hard, but all doable The first line of the post that you are supposedly replying to is: > Of course it works, the question is how this would look like and if its financial feasable. Unless is cost-comparable to a data centre on Earth, and I am told that it very much is not, then there is no financial feasibility for space datacentres.
  - orbisvicis 4mo ago
    More energy will be required than radiation absorbed by a spherical (ish) data center. You'll have massive solar panels piping energy in, and so the temperature would by higher than thermal equilibrium at that distance.
sschueller 4mo ago
You can only cool by radiation in space. You may get more energy from the sun but how are you going to get rid of all the heat fast enough?
- svantana 4mo ago
  How hot do you think black objects in space get? Something like 10°C. Look up thermal equilibrium of an ideal black body.
  - adastra22 4mo ago
    In the vicinity of the Earth, they get to about the temperature of the Earth. That’s not a coincidence. Hotter if they are actively generating heat.
    - Geof25 4mo ago
      So you can have datacenters in space, you are just not allowed to use them
      - jeltz 4mo ago
        Not using them would also solve all issues with cosmic radiation.
    - Symmetry 4mo ago
      Nobody (sane) is talking about putting nuclear reactors on Satellites in close Earth orbit so we don't have to worry about them generating heat. They've got solar panels that move some of the solar energy they absorb to a central location which presents problems in moving the waste heat back out so that spot doesn't get too hot. But that doesn't change the overall equilibrium temperature.
      - adastra22 4mo ago
        Running a data center generates heat.
AntiUSAbah 4mo ago
Its not always on. Its only 'always' on if you would orbit the sun which starlink can't do, it has to orbit the earth. This only works in a certain constelation which would create a halo around our planet, without clear understanding what even would do. The more power you consume, the more power you need to dissipate. These constelations wouldn't be small at all. It would also take a interesting solution to be able to move this heat from very small very intense areas to very big cooling areas. How? And space is not easy. Space is very very cold which puts a lot of stress on materials. It has radiation. And it has A LOT of microasteroids. Stuff in Space breaks down due to this. You would need to replace all of this stuff regularly with resources from the planet earth. You would basically just spend a lot of resources throwing a lot of resources out into space. You can't even recycle all of this. Its still lunatic at our current state of our current system. There is so so much space on our planet. Its ridicoulous The only reason Musk is saying stuff like this is because he knows there is no market and he needs to keep his system alive
- svantana 4mo ago
  A polar low earth orbit can be always-on (no earth shadow). Each satellite will be in thermal equilibrium, around 10°C. Catastrophic destruction from micrometeoroids is rare. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I don't see any dealbreakers in the math/science.
  - mapt 4mo ago
    Kessler Syndrome is the biggest dealbreaker. We're already fairly far advanced in that scenario from Starlink, and competitors/scaleouts to Starlink promise to be worse. If you plug eleventy trillion dollars of hope that the aristos can finally replace the working class into the issue, Earth loses access to low orbit from orbital debris almost immediately. Their entire mindset cannot deal with this. Low orbit is a physically-enforced type of commons, inextricably tied to tragedy if overpopulated. You cannot privatize it and scale indefinitely. There is no defense, and any pissed off individual actor who gets malicious can burn it to the ground.
    - 4mo ago
sidewndr46 4mo ago
while there may not be atmospheric weather, low earth orbit has its own "weather". Before you even reach LEO you start getting bombarded by all forms of energetic particles. None of these are things you want your computers saturated with
panick21_ 4mo ago
So you are comparing putting up slightly more solar panels and some batteries, both things that are mass produced commodity with re-engineering the whole computing ecosystem and how data-centers have been done for decades, transporting them on the most expensive known transportation system and then operating it in a way where you need specially educated experts. So my bet would be that just ordering a bunch of sodium batteries and a bunch of solar panels (or you know using a source of energy that is constant) is cheaper then going threw all the effort of putting things into space. I have been following everything space for decades, and not once have I thought, wow putting super complex engineering things into space so easy and you should do it for things that have an easy alternative on earth.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

lukan 4mo ago

Yes, you get much more radiation from the sun and other sources. How do you do cooling? Radiators the size of small moons? Also hard radiation is not something transistors like.

svantana 4mo ago
The joint solar panel + computer system will be pretty close to an ideal black body, which near earth will have an average temperature of about 10°C. And radiation is an issue, but starlink seems to work so I don't see why this wouldn't.
- lukan 4mo ago
  Starlink does not need so much energy as a datacenter.
  - svantana 4mo ago
    I don't follow your logic. I mentioned starlink as an example of transistors (and solar panels) in space dealing with radiation.
    - lukan 4mo ago
      Well I was talking about heat. But regarding radiation, there is a long history of transistors in space dealing with radiation. But ... there is also a whole science how to deal with making it reliable: answer, expensive redundancy. And about starlink .. as far as I know the fail quite often but work, because of redundancy. So they get replaced. If you want to ship GPU's to the orbit, then this surely works somehow, if you are willing to replace them often, which is expensive. Or you shield them, but then you will need to get up heavy shields. In general, of course computers work in space, but it is not cheap.
- AntiUSAbah 4mo ago
  Of course it works, the question is how this would look like and if its financial feasable. You make a H100, ship it to a space dock, load it onto a rocket (rocket requires fuuel, the rocket, etc.) send it up, deploy it, monitor it live 24/7, have means of adjusting its orbit, if it breaks, its immediade full loss, otherwise it will degenerate faster in space than on earth, now it needs a high speed up/downlink to do anything reasonable which also requires a base station. The base station has to track this satelite. One H100 costs 40k, consumes 700 Watt peak and need probably at a minimum 5 square meter of area for cooling and solar. The colossus datacenter from musk has 250.000 of these. Now you have to track 250.000 single satelites, you have to coordinate the communication between the, up and downlink to earth. 250.000 * 5 square meter of area. This alone increases the potential debris in space. And this is ONE 300 MW Datacenter replacement. ONE.
  - kamaal 4mo ago
    Everything you wrote is some definition of hard, but all doable. None of this is purely in the territory of 'known' impossible(like FTL travel). Now different people have different points where they quit when things get hard. This is true for even everyday things in life. Quitting triggers exist for people at various points in the ladder. The end of ladder and path both exist, its upto you to decide if you wish to continue climbing, or give up and quit. Your mileage may vary.
    - AntiUSAbah 4mo ago
      My problem is not the doing thing but the economy of it. We are nowere near any resource limitation on planet earth for AI Datacenters. Musk sells this story because he has Starship which needs payload to make financial sense. The payload doesn't exist so he inventes DC in Space. Its the same thing as SpaceX buying Tesla Cybertrucks. His old colossus datacenter is a 300MW Datacenter he now rents out to Anthropic because he doesn't even need his own compute. Colossus DC is probably 10x cheaper than his whole Space AI DC Story and will be for a long time.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 4mo ago
      > Everything you wrote is some definition of hard, but all doable The first line of the post that you are supposedly replying to is: > Of course it works, the question is how this would look like and if its financial feasable. Unless is cost-comparable to a data centre on Earth, and I am told that it very much is not, then there is no financial feasibility for space datacentres.
- orbisvicis 4mo ago
  More energy will be required than radiation absorbed by a spherical (ish) data center. You'll have massive solar panels piping energy in, and so the temperature would by higher than thermal equilibrium at that distance.

sschueller 4mo ago

You can only cool by radiation in space. You may get more energy from the sun but how are you going to get rid of all the heat fast enough?

svantana 4mo ago
How hot do you think black objects in space get? Something like 10°C. Look up thermal equilibrium of an ideal black body.
- adastra22 4mo ago
  In the vicinity of the Earth, they get to about the temperature of the Earth. That’s not a coincidence. Hotter if they are actively generating heat.
  - Geof25 4mo ago
    So you can have datacenters in space, you are just not allowed to use them
    - jeltz 4mo ago
      Not using them would also solve all issues with cosmic radiation.
  - Symmetry 4mo ago
    Nobody (sane) is talking about putting nuclear reactors on Satellites in close Earth orbit so we don't have to worry about them generating heat. They've got solar panels that move some of the solar energy they absorb to a central location which presents problems in moving the waste heat back out so that spot doesn't get too hot. But that doesn't change the overall equilibrium temperature.
    - adastra22 4mo ago
      Running a data center generates heat.

AntiUSAbah 4mo ago

Its not always on. Its only 'always' on if you would orbit the sun which starlink can't do, it has to orbit the earth. This only works in a certain constelation which would create a halo around our planet, without clear understanding what even would do. The more power you consume, the more power you need to dissipate. These constelations wouldn't be small at all. It would also take a interesting solution to be able to move this heat from very small very intense areas to very big cooling areas. How? And space is not easy. Space is very very cold which puts a lot of stress on materials. It has radiation. And it has A LOT of microasteroids. Stuff in Space breaks down due to this. You would need to replace all of this stuff regularly with resources from the planet earth. You would basically just spend a lot of resources throwing a lot of resources out into space. You can't even recycle all of this. Its still lunatic at our current state of our current system. There is so so much space on our planet. Its ridicoulous The only reason Musk is saying stuff like this is because he knows there is no market and he needs to keep his system alive

svantana 4mo ago
A polar low earth orbit can be always-on (no earth shadow). Each satellite will be in thermal equilibrium, around 10°C. Catastrophic destruction from micrometeoroids is rare. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I don't see any dealbreakers in the math/science.
- mapt 4mo ago
  Kessler Syndrome is the biggest dealbreaker. We're already fairly far advanced in that scenario from Starlink, and competitors/scaleouts to Starlink promise to be worse. If you plug eleventy trillion dollars of hope that the aristos can finally replace the working class into the issue, Earth loses access to low orbit from orbital debris almost immediately. Their entire mindset cannot deal with this. Low orbit is a physically-enforced type of commons, inextricably tied to tragedy if overpopulated. You cannot privatize it and scale indefinitely. There is no defense, and any pissed off individual actor who gets malicious can burn it to the ground.
  - 4mo ago

sidewndr46 4mo ago

while there may not be atmospheric weather, low earth orbit has its own "weather". Before you even reach LEO you start getting bombarded by all forms of energetic particles. None of these are things you want your computers saturated with

panick21_ 4mo ago

So you are comparing putting up slightly more solar panels and some batteries, both things that are mass produced commodity with re-engineering the whole computing ecosystem and how data-centers have been done for decades, transporting them on the most expensive known transportation system and then operating it in a way where you need specially educated experts. So my bet would be that just ordering a bunch of sodium batteries and a bunch of solar panels (or you know using a source of energy that is constant) is cheaper then going threw all the effort of putting things into space. I have been following everything space for decades, and not once have I thought, wow putting super complex engineering things into space so easy and you should do it for things that have an easy alternative on earth.