Space-based datacenters simply won't work. That people are talking about them shows Musk is the greatest snake oil salesman the world has ever seen.

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criddell an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Space-based datacenters simply won't work.

Everybody knows.

Musk is a snake oil salesman (that’s been clear since the self-driving car promises) but he also has made a lot of people a lot of money and that’s all anybody really cares about.

None of his companies have a traditionally reasonable valuation. Is there any reason to think that’s going to change soon?

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rpdillon 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can anyone explain how the thermals will work? One of the biggest challenges on Earth is cooling the data center, and it's at least as challenging in space.

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fc417fc802 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The earthbound equivalent would be strapping each chassis to the back of a dedicated solar panel and having the panel double as a giant heat sink. The problem is that doesn't work on the surface due to (at least) rain, the day/night cycle, and the cost of real estate.

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marcosdumay 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

That's not right. This works a couple orders of magnitude better on the ground than on space (unless your computers run at several hundred °C).

The reason people don't do it here is because it's too expensive.

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protimewaster 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Isn't a solar panel going to be a poor heatsink, though? It's flat, and thus has relatively small surface area compared to its size.

	▲	fc417fc802 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In atmosphere, yeah, relatively speaking. But it doesn't matter since in this scenario each chassis is powered exclusively by the respective panel. How hot does a black panel sitting in the midday sun get? That's your equilibrium temperature. As long as it's within the operational limit of the device there's no problem. The reason earthbound DCs are difficult to cool is because of density. When you match up panels to devices and shelter in their shadow you no longer have anywhere near the same power density.

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wuschel 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thermals are one among many really big challenges that require costly solutions.

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dgellow 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It won’t. It’s not supposed to work, it’s a mirage to raise dumb money. It’s way, way more challenging to cool something a vacuum. The only option is radiative cooling, which is far from being performant. The idea is as realistic as Musk previous grifts such as his digging company and there hyperloop, both absurd and supposed to revolutionize transport, both created as grifting devices and ensure public transport doesn’t develop in the US

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saimiam 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> won’t work

A datacenter (earthbound or space) itself is a fantastical idea until a mix of events and inventions made it feasible to build them to sell compute.

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newsclues 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You think the military can’t or won’t dump billions into this to make killing people with drones more effective?

It’s a engineering challenge not impossible.

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Drakim 5 hours ago | parent [-]

There are asteroids with concentrations of precious metals more valuable than earth's entire economy. Why don't we just send up spaceships to mine them and send the haul back to earth? What country would say no to free money?

After all, it's just an engineering challenge, not impossible.

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fc417fc802 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The numbers on that are at least somewhat questionable. Even ignoring that you'd crash the market (thus it's not actually worth what it first appears to be) what is the total fuel cost to adjust the orbit of the target asteroid to land the entire thing back on the earth? Because that's what you're doing bit by bit as you shuttle loads of ore back.

Now if you have space based manufacturing or fuel production on the other hand ...

	▲	XorNot an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That's the point. Basic rule of thumb: anytime someone is arguing that the military will fund something, they're wrong. Its not a real argument it's just used because to most people the military is a big mysterious thing they don't understand which they think has an infinite budget for things.