7 ms·

In addition to lack of solar energy, I wonder if nuclear power source is necessary to keep batteries or other electronics warm enough to function properly. Con

by cwkoss 7y ago

In addition to lack of solar energy, I wonder if nuclear power source is necessary to keep batteries or other electronics warm enough to function properly. Conversely, on Titan, we won't need to worry about heat sinks as everything is kept at ~94K in a bath of liquid and frozen methane. Perhaps in a few hundred years AWS's most popular region for intensive compute will be under Titan's methane sea. High spin up cost, but cheap super-conduction environment once you're up.

rzimmerman 7y ago
That's a good point - the "waste" heat from an RTG (which is only about 5% efficient) is very useful in those extreme cold temperatures.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  NASA makes a smaller RTGs for heating tasks, they can scale smaller if they don’t need to generate electricity.
saagarjha 7y ago
Super fast compute, but awful ping…
- newsoul2019 7y ago
  Perfect for mining bitcoin
  - redcalx 7y ago
    Not really; if you find a block it will mostly likely have been beaten by someone else's block by the time yours reaches most nodes...unless there is a Saturn based side chain or similar.
    - heavenlyblue 7y ago
      It depends if the "most nodes" are on Mercury or on Earth.
    - blotter_paper 7y ago
      This will sound crazy, and I'm not suggesting the consumer would deal with it directly, but I think we'll need coins for each planetary body and another one for the solar system that has a much longer block time. More scales would be useful, but these are the minimum. Repeat for each star, with MilkyWayCoin having an absurd block time.
- disconnected 7y ago
  To put it into perspective: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/titan/overview/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/titan/overvi... According to this (at the time of reading) a one way trip at the speed of light is ~75 minutes, so you will have approximately two and a half hours of ping. Ouch. Still, it raises an interesting question: how would a hypothetical Earth-Titan network protocol work?
  - tomrod 7y ago
    Batch instead of stream I'd reckon.
  - tericho 7y ago
    Can't do much about the time it takes light to get here, so I guess the answer is we'd have to learn to love 75 minute ping :)
    - keanebean86 7y ago
      Alcubierre warp drive powered Sneakernet?
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      If you can't be with the one you ping, ping the one you're with.
  - jvanderbot 7y ago
    That protocol exists, it is called Delay-Tolerant-Networking. http://ipnsig.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Whats-new-in-ION.pdf http://ipnsig.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Whats-new-in-IO...
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    The InterPlanetary File System is a thing, it just isn't interplanetary yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System
jedberg 7y ago
Why do you think they launched a deep space reviving network at re:invent last year?
z3t4 7y ago
Might be suitable for quantum computing ... Re. thin atmosphere and low gravity, humans could probable be able to fly wearing wings. So if we put a base there it would not be boring.
magnamerc 7y ago
I find it kind of funny that you think AWS will still be around in a hundred years.
- eindiran 7y ago
  This paper company was founded 771 AD: https://www.shinise.ne.jp/j_kyoto/voices/vol/48/48-d.html https://www.shinise.ne.jp/j_kyoto/voices/vol/48/48-d.html It's not even the longest-lived company in the world. This construction company was founded in 578 AD and continuously operated until 2006 when it was bought by a larger company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi 100 years ago was only 1919 -- here are some random companies from 1919 that I found on Wikipedia (ignoring for a moment that this is plainly surviorship bias): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champion_(sportswear) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champion_(sportswear) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KitchenAid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KitchenAid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrifty_PayLess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrifty_PayLess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proffitt%27s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proffitt%27s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26W_Restaurants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26W_Restaurants Companies surviving for 100 years isn't quite routine but it's certainly not so rare that its surprising when one does. I don't think it's at all inconceivable that Amazon could stay open for a hundred years. It's made it past the first 10 years, the turbulent start when most companies are culled. I'd wager that the biggest threat to Amazon surviving to 100 is being broken up a la Bell/Standard Oil.
  - elil17 7y ago
    Even after being broken up, AWS would still exist - it just wouldn’t be part of the amazon conglomerate
  - eloff 7y ago
    A company lasts just 11 years on average on the S&P 500 now. Companies are surviving for shorter time periods now then they used to.
ajmurmann 7y ago
Hah, I was always intrigued by the idea of placing solar cells on the bright side of Mercury and servers on the dark side. I wonder what other good options might exist in the solar system.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Mercury's whisper thin atmosphere won't be much use for cooling anything, though possibly the surface would be. However, the real problem is that Mercury isn't actually tidally locked anyway.
  - cookingrobot 7y ago
    In certain regions on Mercury the temperature stays within 1 degree of room temperature less than a meter underground. http://einstein-schrodinger.com/Mercury_temperature.pdf http://einstein-schrodinger.com/Mercury_temperature.pdf It’s actually relatively habitable. http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html
    - newsoul2019 7y ago
      > In fact, if we delay until the distant future, or even 50 years or so, such an effort probably will become impossible. This is because us humans will consume the Earth's non-renewable energy and mineral resources almost completely within the next 50-100 years, severely reducing our discretionary income for costly activities such as space travel. I wonder when that was written...
      - jp555 7y ago
        Makes me think of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
      - dredmorbius 7y ago
        Likely around 2013 by the Wayback Machine.
  - 7y ago
qseraserasera 7y ago
Well we don't want to disturb the environment too much
gene-h 7y ago
Interestingly they actually exploit these cold temperatures to keep things cool. The Dragonfly Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer(DraGNS)'s gamma ray detector is mounted outside.[0] In most other probes the detector would need to kept cold with a cryocooler. [0]https://www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/TD/td3403/34_03-Lorenz.pdf https://www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/TD/td3403/34_03-Lorenz.pdf
cosmodisk 7y ago
Not again...Just had a call from a recruiter asking if I'd be willing to relocate.The comp is fantastic, the job is to maintain AWS server farm.. Had to decline,as my wife doesn't feel like going to Titan..
swypych 7y ago
Never thought about this before, in theory does this bring super conductors closer to reality?

by cwkoss 7y ago

rzimmerman 7y ago

That's a good point - the "waste" heat from an RTG (which is only about 5% efficient) is very useful in those extreme cold temperatures.

greglindahl 7y ago
NASA makes a smaller RTGs for heating tasks, they can scale smaller if they don’t need to generate electricity.

saagarjha 7y ago

Super fast compute, but awful ping…

newsoul2019 7y ago
Perfect for mining bitcoin
- redcalx 7y ago
  Not really; if you find a block it will mostly likely have been beaten by someone else's block by the time yours reaches most nodes...unless there is a Saturn based side chain or similar.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    It depends if the "most nodes" are on Mercury or on Earth.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    This will sound crazy, and I'm not suggesting the consumer would deal with it directly, but I think we'll need coins for each planetary body and another one for the solar system that has a much longer block time. More scales would be useful, but these are the minimum. Repeat for each star, with MilkyWayCoin having an absurd block time.
disconnected 7y ago
To put it into perspective: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/titan/overview/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/titan/overvi... According to this (at the time of reading) a one way trip at the speed of light is ~75 minutes, so you will have approximately two and a half hours of ping. Ouch. Still, it raises an interesting question: how would a hypothetical Earth-Titan network protocol work?
- tomrod 7y ago
  Batch instead of stream I'd reckon.
- tericho 7y ago
  Can't do much about the time it takes light to get here, so I guess the answer is we'd have to learn to love 75 minute ping :)
  - keanebean86 7y ago
    Alcubierre warp drive powered Sneakernet?
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    If you can't be with the one you ping, ping the one you're with.
- jvanderbot 7y ago
  That protocol exists, it is called Delay-Tolerant-Networking. http://ipnsig.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Whats-new-in-ION.pdf http://ipnsig.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Whats-new-in-IO...
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  The InterPlanetary File System is a thing, it just isn't interplanetary yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System

jedberg 7y ago

Why do you think they launched a deep space reviving network at re:invent last year?

z3t4 7y ago

Might be suitable for quantum computing ... Re. thin atmosphere and low gravity, humans could probable be able to fly wearing wings. So if we put a base there it would not be boring.

magnamerc 7y ago

I find it kind of funny that you think AWS will still be around in a hundred years.

eindiran 7y ago
This paper company was founded 771 AD: https://www.shinise.ne.jp/j_kyoto/voices/vol/48/48-d.html https://www.shinise.ne.jp/j_kyoto/voices/vol/48/48-d.html It's not even the longest-lived company in the world. This construction company was founded in 578 AD and continuously operated until 2006 when it was bought by a larger company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi 100 years ago was only 1919 -- here are some random companies from 1919 that I found on Wikipedia (ignoring for a moment that this is plainly surviorship bias): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champion_(sportswear) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champion_(sportswear) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KitchenAid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KitchenAid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrifty_PayLess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrifty_PayLess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proffitt%27s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proffitt%27s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26W_Restaurants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26W_Restaurants Companies surviving for 100 years isn't quite routine but it's certainly not so rare that its surprising when one does. I don't think it's at all inconceivable that Amazon could stay open for a hundred years. It's made it past the first 10 years, the turbulent start when most companies are culled. I'd wager that the biggest threat to Amazon surviving to 100 is being broken up a la Bell/Standard Oil.
- elil17 7y ago
  Even after being broken up, AWS would still exist - it just wouldn’t be part of the amazon conglomerate
- eloff 7y ago
  A company lasts just 11 years on average on the S&P 500 now. Companies are surviving for shorter time periods now then they used to.

ajmurmann 7y ago

Hah, I was always intrigued by the idea of placing solar cells on the bright side of Mercury and servers on the dark side. I wonder what other good options might exist in the solar system.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Mercury's whisper thin atmosphere won't be much use for cooling anything, though possibly the surface would be. However, the real problem is that Mercury isn't actually tidally locked anyway.
- cookingrobot 7y ago
  In certain regions on Mercury the temperature stays within 1 degree of room temperature less than a meter underground. http://einstein-schrodinger.com/Mercury_temperature.pdf http://einstein-schrodinger.com/Mercury_temperature.pdf It’s actually relatively habitable. http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html
  - newsoul2019 7y ago
    > In fact, if we delay until the distant future, or even 50 years or so, such an effort probably will become impossible. This is because us humans will consume the Earth's non-renewable energy and mineral resources almost completely within the next 50-100 years, severely reducing our discretionary income for costly activities such as space travel. I wonder when that was written...
    - jp555 7y ago
      Makes me think of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Likely around 2013 by the Wayback Machine.
- 7y ago

qseraserasera 7y ago

Well we don't want to disturb the environment too much

gene-h 7y ago

Interestingly they actually exploit these cold temperatures to keep things cool. The Dragonfly Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer(DraGNS)'s gamma ray detector is mounted outside.[0] In most other probes the detector would need to kept cold with a cryocooler. [0]https://www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/TD/td3403/34_03-Lorenz.pdf https://www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/TD/td3403/34_03-Lorenz.pdf

cosmodisk 7y ago

Not again...Just had a call from a recruiter asking if I'd be willing to relocate.The comp is fantastic, the job is to maintain AWS server farm.. Had to decline,as my wife doesn't feel like going to Titan..

swypych 7y ago

Never thought about this before, in theory does this bring super conductors closer to reality?