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| ▲ | kevin_thibedeau 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > a vast network of AI servers in orbit That story makes no technical sense. There's no benefit to doing this. Nobody should believe it any more than boots on Mars by 2030. | | | |
| ▲ | airza 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | it wasn't ignored on HN, there were many articles correctly noting that building data centers in space is a stupid stupid idea because cooling things there is infeasible | | |
| ▲ | woah 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Was doing some back of the envelope math with chatGPT so take it with a grain of salt, but it sounds like in ideal conditions a radiator of 1m square could dissipate 300w. If this is the case, then it seems like you could approach a viable solution if putting stuff in space was free. What i can't figure out is how the cost of launch makes sense and what the benefit over building it on the ground could be | | |
| ▲ | spikels 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | What temperature were you assuming? Because the amount of energy radiated varies with the temperature to the fourth power (P=εσT^4). Assuming very good emissivity (ε=0.95) and ~75C (~350K) operating temperature I get 808 W/m2. |
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| ▲ | spikels 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Google, Blue Origin and at least 5 other smaller companies have announced plans to build data centers in space. My understanding is the cooling issue is not the show stopper you assume. | | |
| ▲ | bhadass 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | yup, bezos said "we will be able to beat the cost of terrestrial data centers in space in the next couple of decades". presumably this means they'll need huge ass radiators, so its all about bringing down launch costs since they'll need to increase mass. |
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| ▲ | kortex 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | lol WHAT? AI datacenters are bottlenecked by power, bandwidth, cooling, and maintenance. Ok sure maybe the Sun provides ample power, but if you are in LEO, you still have to deal with Earth's shadow, which means batteries, which means weight. Bandwidth you have via starlink, fine. But cooling in space is not trivial. And maintenance is out, unless they are also planning some kooky docking astromech satellite repair robot ecosystem. Maybe the Olney's lesions are starting to take their toll. Weirdest freaking timeline. | | |
| ▲ | crote 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | The shadow thing can be solved by using a sun-synchronous orbit. See for example the TRACE solar observation satellite, which used a dawn/dusk orbit to maintain a constant view of the sun. Cooling, on the other hand? No way in hell. | | |
| ▲ | clausz 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Every telco satellite can cool its electronics. However, more than a few kW is difficult. The ISS has around 100kW and is huge and in a shadow half the time. | |
| ▲ | SJC_Hacker 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Cooling, on the other hand? No way in hell. Space is actually really cold when the sun is blocked So, solar panels on side, GPUs on the other, maybe with a big ass radiator ... | | | |
| ▲ | giancarlostoro 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The cooling is the bit where I'm lost on, but it will be interesting to see what they pull off. It feels like everyone forgets Elon hires very smart people to work on these problems, it's not all figured out by Elon Musk solely. | | |
| ▲ | spikels 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Google, Blue Origin and a bunch of other companies have announced plans for data centers in space. I don't think cooling is the showstopper some assume. | | |
| ▲ | giancarlostoro 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Good call out, and really interesting. SpaceX being the cheapest way to get things into space, it seems like SpaceX is about to become extremely lucrative. |
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