https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1984868748378157312
They're already having a negative, contaminating effect on our upper atmosphere
Sending up bigger ones, and more (today there's some 8,800, but they target 30k), sounds ill-advised.
1: https://www.fastcompany.com/91419515/starlink-satellites-are... 2: https://www.science.org/content/article/burned-satellites-ar...
Am I missing something? Feels like an extremely strong indicator that we're in some level of AI bubble because it just doesn't make any sense at all.
I'm surprised that Google has drunken the "Datacenters IN SPACE!!!1!!" kool-aid. Honestly I expected more.
It's so easy to poke a hole in these systems that it's comical. Answer just one question: How/why is this better than an enormous solar-powered datacenter in someplace like the middle of the Mojave Desert?
I think it's a good idea, actually.
A giant space station?
> no need for security
There will be if launch costs get low enough to make any of this feasible.
> no premises
Again… the space station?
> no water
That makes things harder, not easier.
I have my doubts that it's with it with current or near future launch costs. But at least it's more realistic than putting solar arrays in orbit and beaming the power down
It's probably not why they're interested in it, but I'd like to imagine someone with a vision for the next couple decades realized that their company already has data centers and powering them as their core competency, and all they're missing is some space experience...
It gets very exciting if you don't have enough.
> Nothing to obsess about.
It's one of the primary reasons these "AI datacenters… in space!" projects are goofy.
In fact everything in this paper is already solved by SpaceX except GPU cooling.
ceejayoz•2h ago
Sure. Now do cooling. That this isn't in the "key challenges" section makes this pretty non-serious.
A surprising amount of the ISS is dedicated to this, and they aren't running a GPU farm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Contro...
boutell•2h ago
TeMPOraL•12m ago
This is not the 1960s. Today, if you have an idea for doing something in space, you can start by scoping out the details of your mission plan and payload requirements, and then see if you can solve it with parts off a catalogue.
(Of course there's million issues that will crop up when actually designing and building the spacecraft, but that's too low level for this kind of paper, which just notes that (the authors believe) the platform requirements fall close enough to existing systems to not be worth belaboring.)
xnx•1h ago
eminence32•1h ago
stronglikedan•1h ago
abtinf•1h ago
TeMPOraL•55m ago
TeMPOraL•59m ago
More seriously though, the paper itself touches on cooling and radiators. Not much, but that's reasonable - cooling isn't rocket science :), it's a solved problem. Talking about it here makes as much sense as taking about basic attitude control. Cooling the satellite and pointing it in the right direction are solved problems. They're important to detail in full system design, but not interesting enough for a paper that's about "data centers, but in space!".
ceejayoz•56m ago
It's solved on Earth because we have relatively easy (and relatively scalable) ways of getting rid of it - ventilation and water.
TeMPOraL•52m ago
ceejayoz•41m ago
Sure, in the same sense that I could build a bridge from Australia to Los Angeles with "no new tech". All I have to do is find enough dirt!
TeMPOraL•30m ago
We're past the point of every satellite being a custom R&D job resulting in an entirely bespoke design. We're even moving past the point where you need to haggle about every gram; launch costs have dropped a lot, giving more options to trade mass against other parameters, like more effective heat rejection :).
But I think the first and most important point for this entire discussion thread is: there is a paper - an actual PDF - linked in the article, in a sidebar to the right, which seemingly nobody read. It would be useful to do that.
ceejayoz•28m ago
Now ask them to do the Australia / Los Angeles one.
"lol no"
The where and the scale matter.
TeMPOraL•22m ago
Scale: Lots of small satellites.
I.e. done to death and boring. Number of spacecraft does not affect the heat management of individual spacecraft.
Much like number of bridges you build around the world does not directly affect the amount of traffic on any individual one.
ceejayoz•19m ago
Challenging!
> Scale: Lots of small satellites.
So we're getting cheaper by ditching economies of scale?
There's a reason datacenters are ever-larger giant warehouses.
> Much like number of bridges you build around the world does not directly affect the amount of traffic on any individual one.
But there are places you don't build bridges. Because it's impractical.
TeMPOraL•18m ago
estimator7292•18m ago
We do not have a solution for getting rid of megawatts or gigawatts of heat in space.
What the sibling comment is pointing out is that you cannot simply scale up any and every technology to any problem scale. If you want to get rid of megawatts of heat with our current technology, you need to ship up several tons of radiators and then build massive kilometer-scale radiation panels. The only way to dump heat in space is to let a hot object radiate infrared light into the void. This is an incredibly slow and inefficient process, which is directly controlled by the surface area of your radiator.
The amount of radiators you need for a scheme like this is entirely out of the question.