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"Foxconn has announced a giant glass dome that will house a data center" I'm hard pressed to think of a worse place to put a data centre than under a glass dom

"Foxconn has announced a giant glass dome that will house a data center" I'm hard pressed to think of a worse place to put a data centre than under a glass dome. The moon, perhaps?

Ghjklov 7y ago
Yeah the moon would be terrible. Data literally just floats off into the void under zero gravity.
- thawaway1837 7y ago
  The moon isn’t 0 gravity.
  - slyall 7y ago
    Okay "Freefall"
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    That's the part of the joke you want to nit pick?
Taek 7y ago
The moon would be very bad. No atmosphere = no heat dissipation. For thermal reasons alone, computing is a massive challenge in space.
- ccmcarey 7y ago
  you have a planet you could vent heat into?
  - rsynnott 7y ago
    Venting heat _into the ground_ is not even remotely an efficient process, unless you have no other option.
    - titanomachy 7y ago
      Not on earth, where the ground is relatively warm... but lunar subsurface temperatures are -20 or -30°C. You could sink heat into that pretty fast.
      - Taek 7y ago
        They are -20C until you drop a bunch of heat into them. Air works well because it's a fluid. And even as a fluid it's completely ineffective at cooling a cpu. You need to pair that fluid with a heatsink that creates massive surface area and a powered fan that is blowing in a steady stream of cool air to replace the air that has heated up. Even liquid cooling setups on earth eventually blow their heat into the atmosphere as the primary means of keeping the liquid cool.
        defterGoose 7y ago
        Lots of types of rock have better thermal conductivity than water or air. The subsurface of the moon is vast and would dissipate the heat far too quickly for an appreciable temperature change.
        Paradigma11 7y ago
        But the subsurface of the moon is somewhat less mobile than air or water in cooling systems.
      - willis936 7y ago
        Planet rock is actually a decent insulator in large volumes/long timescales. You’d just heat up the nearby rock quickly, assuming you plan to compute for longer than a week. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storage#Underground_thermal_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storag...
        titanomachy 7y ago
        Then I guess we'd need to build roving datacentres :)

"Foxconn has announced a giant glass dome that will house a data center" I'm hard pressed to think of a worse place to put a data centre than under a glass dome. The moon, perhaps?

Ghjklov 7y ago

Yeah the moon would be terrible. Data literally just floats off into the void under zero gravity.

thawaway1837 7y ago
The moon isn’t 0 gravity.
- slyall 7y ago
  Okay "Freefall"
- nkrisc 7y ago
  That's the part of the joke you want to nit pick?

Taek 7y ago

The moon would be very bad. No atmosphere = no heat dissipation. For thermal reasons alone, computing is a massive challenge in space.

ccmcarey 7y ago
you have a planet you could vent heat into?
- rsynnott 7y ago
  Venting heat _into the ground_ is not even remotely an efficient process, unless you have no other option.
  - titanomachy 7y ago
    Not on earth, where the ground is relatively warm... but lunar subsurface temperatures are -20 or -30°C. You could sink heat into that pretty fast.
    - Taek 7y ago
      They are -20C until you drop a bunch of heat into them. Air works well because it's a fluid. And even as a fluid it's completely ineffective at cooling a cpu. You need to pair that fluid with a heatsink that creates massive surface area and a powered fan that is blowing in a steady stream of cool air to replace the air that has heated up. Even liquid cooling setups on earth eventually blow their heat into the atmosphere as the primary means of keeping the liquid cool.
      - defterGoose 7y ago
        Lots of types of rock have better thermal conductivity than water or air. The subsurface of the moon is vast and would dissipate the heat far too quickly for an appreciable temperature change.
        Paradigma11 7y ago
        But the subsurface of the moon is somewhat less mobile than air or water in cooling systems.
    - willis936 7y ago
      Planet rock is actually a decent insulator in large volumes/long timescales. You’d just heat up the nearby rock quickly, assuming you plan to compute for longer than a week. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storage#Underground_thermal_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storag...
      - titanomachy 7y ago
        Then I guess we'd need to build roving datacentres :)