I am just honestly confused. There seem to be no logical reason for it, except that it would raise the stock value of rocket producers like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
You just wouldn’t. The ISS is the largest thing we’ve ever built in space previously. It has an internal area about equal to a 747 passenger jet. That’s about 4800 sq ft, but the entire structure is about the size of a football field, with the solar panels needed to power it and whatnot - that’s 57,800 sq ft total space taken up to get that 4800 sq ft. The average data center currently is around 100,000 sq ft. The ISS took about 1000 hours of space walking and 136 space flights to build. So we need 20 times the ISS to build one average data center, so 20,000 hours (that’s a team of 10 people working 12 hour shifts for 166 days) of space walking to build, 2700 space flights, and it would1 take up over 1 million square feet of space in the sky.
OH, and that is completely ignoring the fact that ISS orbits earth in 90 minutes. Maintaining data transfer capabilities from that to Earth would be a nightmare and building a structure that big that close to Earth also means it’s going to be BRIGHT in the night sky (like, ok, not as bright as a full moon or anything, but 20 times brighter than ISS which is the 3rd brightest thing in our night sky already… This data center would be well ahead and into the number 2 spot, you literally wouldn’t be able to miss it).
OH OH, that is also ignoring how incredibly difficult it would be to cool. Cooling components on the ISS is one of the biggest challenges because there is nowhere for the heat to go. So add on hauling several million gallons of water to space every month I guess? I dunno what their plan would even look like for cooling that is such a monumental problem.
AND THAT IS JUST ONE AVERAGE DATA CENTER. The cost would be astronomical. The environmental impact would be devastating. The repercussions would be severe. The benefit would be almost non-existent and very short lived if there even was any.
1 - Ok, this is all napkin math based on what it took to build the ISS. Could it be done more efficiently the second time around? Maybe, but we aren’t just talking about ISS 2: Electric Boogaloo either, we are talking about a giant 20x structure. Chances are it would be even worse than these estimates - and where the hell is SpaceX going to get the actual physical man-power to do the construction of this thing in orbit??
That also assumes this is done in the same orbit as the ISS right? The ISS isn’t in a stable orbit, right?. It occasionally needs to adjust its orbit because of atmospheric drag. You’re talking about 20x the area which could be a considerable difference in mass. That’s more fuel needed per burn which also needs to be transported up to the data center. Otherwise you are looking at putting this thing in an even higher orbit which comes with its own host of problems.
there isn’t any good reason. you should start giving less attention to those who shout loudest, IMO.
it would raise the stock value of rocket producers like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Nailed it. Data centers in space is an objectively terrible idea but most people are too stupid to understand why. They see it as free real estate in the ignorance of the logistical problems of constructing structures in space large enough to be of any use, let alone powering and cooling them. The failure of the American education system has made the populace an easy hunting ground for modern Snake Oil salesmen.
Ding ding!
- It’s not better for cooling. - No air or water to dissipate heat.
- It’s not better for communication. - Beaming data is always more lossy than its physically connected counterpart.
- It’s not less expensive. - Just submerge it, or build closer to the poles with wind and solar to power it
Also, it throws more junk in our orbit, is more difficult to maintain and upgrade, and has a significantly more catastrophic fail result.
But why do things logically or sustainably when you* can make money?
* you = someone who already is hoarding a large portion of our wealth.
But then how do they make money out of it?
By scamming investors and fooling shareholders.
same way musk made a shitton of money with hyperloop: by getting other people to pay for it and then not actually do it.
ever heard of the Nazi bases on the moon?
yeah. that’s why.
I don’t think it makes any sense either:
- Cooling will be large and expensive as hell
- Getting computers there will be expensive
- Getting solar cells there will be expensive
- The radiolink to earthbound networks will be expensive and slow
The only positive is that the energy will be cheap, and that the computers are safe except from nation state actors and untracked space debris.
You answered half of your own question.
“it would raise the value of rocket producers like SpaceX and Blue Origin.”
The other thing is a complete lack of jurisdiction. At least theoretically, nobody can go after them for generating grossly illegal content in space.
Also, pure hypermasculine fetishism.
Also, pure hypermasculine fetishism.
This is the weirdest take on data centers ever.
Direct solar, easy heat dissipation, SpaceX stock price
Overheating is a massive issue outside the atmosphere. There’s no passive airflow to transfer heat through convection and there’s no air at all to utilize conduction. The only method left is radiation - the mechanism that let’s you feel the heat of a fire from the side. That’s the slowest option of them all.
Space is not cold in any sense of thermal management because space is essentially empty. Representations of people/fluids freezing when evacuated into space isn’t a good representation of actual thermal management. While there is some freezing effect, it’s because the rapid vaporizaiton of water cools the remaining water and can go below the freezing point. But, realistically, bodies don’t really freeze to an appreciable degree. Meanwhile, for everything else not containing water, there’s nothing to cool it down. In fact, of the very few particles that are flying around, they’re actually quite hot. Atoms flying for millions of years are still over 20,000 degrees.
So no. Thermal management makes orbital data centers the actual worst option.
“easy heat dissipation” lol there is nothing easy about getting rid of heat in space.
There is zero economic reason. Most optimistic cost estimates are 5x more expensive than earth systems powered by solar and batteries. With near term optimism 10x more expensive.
The only reason is skynet that is immune for anyone in the US pulling the plug from skynet. Russia/China can already hit sattelites or terrestrial datacenters with missiles, and space ones are more vulnerable because Americans are more likely to cheer destruction of skynet assets used to oppress them.
The other factor is international law permits squatters rights to the most desirable orbits. 300 years from now, we may need power/data beemed to/from space. Privatizing it for oligarchy is a great long term investment if it is subsidized by US government.
I remember watching a real engineering video, the white paper for it doesn’t go into properly explaining the cooling mechanism. There were plenty of other problems too, but this alone was enough for me to know it’s running on pure hopium.
Oh and you cannot just use the corporate maths in this and not count initial costs, and costs of assembling the whole thing. Estimated area of solar panels for a datacenter of 5GW was 12.5km² assuming the best of the solar technologies used. The initial cost of putting it up there would be so high, it might even dwarf the lifetime operation cost.
In my opinion, it’s just another grift like hyperloop ko keep the AI bubble from popping.
Edit:5 not 4gw
No, it seems like you understand it perfectly.
To protect them from missiles and drones
Skynet. They want to build skynet. Go watch Terminator. I guess that’s going to become a posthumous documentary.
- Global geographic coverage with very low dependence on local infrastructure
- Extremely difficult physical access compared with a conventional datacenter
- Enormous distributed sensor/communications/computing network
- Integration with Starlink’s existing global communications infrastructure
- Resilience against localized disasters or attacks
- Direct access to governments and militaries that want autonomous communications, sensing, and computation
- Essentially uninterruptible power source
- Guided weapon systems, military intelligence and recon
Etc… come on. It’s skynet! That’s the funny thing you called a data center but really that’s kind of the least of what’s going on.
They’re harder for us to burn to the fucking ground if we can’t reach them.
Transferring huge amount of data between space and earth’s surface is costly and a big bottleneck. If you have a lot of data coming from space (satellite watches and listen to a lot of stuff) that needs processing, you can hit that bottleneck. Moving processing power into space removes it. Data transfer, using any kind of wave (even light) can be make way more efficient, so you can process a massive amount of data way faster, and only send back down there the result.
This has two obvious type of applications : useful for humanity, and dreadful for humanity. Think, doing weather forecast vs. using worldwide pinpoint tracking of any electronic device, including ones that don’t necessarily have wireless capabilities. Guess which one will be prevalent.
Well, that, and doing a pump’n’dump with investors money, since for now the technology to do that reliably isn’t really a thing, and spacex whitepaper just goes “yeah, we know this is a problem, we don’t care”.
The problem starts when you try to do the math for power and cooling. Plus they’re relying on the deployment being almost free.
And then there’s the maintenance…
This guy gets it. Musk is building skynet.
It’s cold up there
And yet the worst place to cool something since it is a vacuum.
You really don’t know shit about radiators do you?
You really don’t know shit about heat dissipation do you?
