You've listed:

1. Radiating heat needs large radiators 2. Bit flips require extra compute capacity

Neither of those violate the laws of physics. As I said, they may not work economically, but that depends on a large number of unknowns, including the cost per ton to orbit and the cost per GW of new power capacity on Earth in 2030. If you have a time machine and know those numbers, then can I please borrow your time machine?

Moreover, when you say, "ALL the other problems ... someone with expertise in the domain could mention," you're saying either:

A) SpaceX engineers do not have expertise in this domain. B) SpaceX engineers are hiding all the problems that they know about.

B is basically a conspiracy theory. It is one YouTube video away from saying the moon landing was a hoax.

A is just delusional.

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vel0city 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Or potentially:

C) SpaceX engineers enjoy their cushy salary funded by a guy who won't take "that doesn't make sense" for an answer to work on rockets and neat technology, even if it may never really work out.

	▲	fragmede 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Do you know anyone that works at SpaceX? They get paid well, yes, but my friends who work there say they work you really hard. The bet that's being made is that there will be advancements in materials science that make data centers in space viable. If you hypothesize that there's a way to cool things down in space if you just had the right material to do it, it makes sense. Starlink satellites are already compute plus solar panels. Just scale it up! Or course "just" is doing a lot of work here, but that's the theory.
	▲	GMoromisato 18 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's a different conspiracy theory, for which there is also no evidence.

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vrganj 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So between the giant radiator per GPU and the diminished compute capacity, how much mass are we shooting up exactly? This just seems utterly infeasible.

You're missing C) SpaceX engineers know it's a bad idea, but can't say anything because it's the tyrant manchild's latest obsession, technology constraints be damned.

Remember the vision-only FSD? How's that coming along?

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ethbr1 18 hours ago | parent [-]

> because it's the tyrant manchild's latest obsession, technology constraints be damned.

Imho, there's only one reason that justifies Musk's space-based compute obsession: sovereignty.

Specifically, avoiding terrestrial country's.

This isn't about AI in space (though I'm sure dumb investors love that), it's about uncensorable Twitter in space, beamed down to Starlink terminals.

Which would be one of the few things you'd care about, if you were one of the richest people on the planet... but still subject to those damned nations and their meddling laws.

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jacquesm 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's exactly it. Musk sees space as extraterritorial, which in the true sense of the word of course it absolutely is. But all those bits have to go to ground somewhere. As long as that somewhere is friendly no problem. That can change.

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grim_io 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If Elon wants to offer space-twitter, he still needs to abide by the rules of the country he is offering the service to.

Unless he's offering it to the aliens orbiting his magical lawless space data centers.

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ethbr1 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Does he?

Short of countrywide ku-band jamming and/or drone-based RDF at scale, what's the country going to do?

It was one thing when you needed a C-band dish to receive, but much harder to deal with a 1-2 ft dish.

	▲	vrganj 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They could shoot down those data centers for example.

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solid_fuel 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, I think Musk loves the idea of sticking his CSAM generators in space, where he thinks they will be beyond the reach of terrestrial laws and morals.