6 ms·

> Some parts of the moon are permanently shadowed and therefore extremely cold, as low as -173 °C. This means that no energy or water would need to be expended

by M95D 2y ago

> Some parts of the moon are permanently shadowed and therefore extremely cold, as low as -173 °C. This means that no energy or water would need to be expended to cool the data center. That doesn't sound right to me. If there's no air, then only black body radiation can be used to cool the data center. That means a massive radiator, a lot larger than a heat-to-air radiator+fan used on earth.

dekhn 2y ago
I agree (problem for satellites), but then I wondered if you could dissipate the heat into the ground in a large area.
- perihelions 2y ago
  Isn't moon sand a very high thermal insulator? edit: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9646997/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9646997/ ("Thermophysical properties of the regolith on the lunar far side revealed by the in situ temperature probing of the Chang’E-4 mission") Comparing against reference tables, it's more insulating than rock wool insulation, https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_429.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_42...
  - dekhn 2y ago
    There's a reason I state my dumb ideas out loud :)
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - IndrekR 2y ago
    Rockwool is much better thermal insulator in vacuum as well…
JoeAltmaier 2y ago
Conduction through the ground? Or run coolant through buried pipes. Just a pump; no significant energy to cool, just move the coolant.
- ok_dad 2y ago
  Just ship all that heavy coolant up there first
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    You'd probably use lunar water from the ice that's believed to be in shadowed craters at the poles.
    - ok_dad 2y ago
      Just heat up all that super cooled ice first
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        I like how you’ve done a complete 180 on the problem here.
        ok_dad 2y ago
        No, I’m saying it’s stupid to put this on the moon. Every time someone says, “just do this” there are complexities and costs that they don’t account for. Where will you get the immense energy needed to melt supercooled ice?! It’s ridiculous that I’m even arguing, it’s such a stupid idea.
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        > No, I’m saying it’s stupid to put this on the moon. I agree with that. Just not for the heating/cooling reasons. > Where will you get the immense energy needed to melt supercooled ice?! The problem was too much heat. Now it's too little heat. You can't have both. The energy comes from the server farm. The coolant comes from the ice. You melt your first ice with the heat from the server farm (or an initial solar field).
mppm 2y ago
They've got it all figured out, you just don't understand. Basically, the plan is: 1. Put data on the moon 2. ??? 3. Profit For more info, check out their promotional video: https://www.lonestarlunar.com/video https://www.lonestarlunar.com/video
- uberman 2y ago
  This is as big a scam or waste as those solar mirror people. Throwing a USB stick out the lunar rover window and calling it a data center. Data centers usually do stuff other than sit in the dust. Feel free to invest though, perhaps if you feel good about discarding hard drives on the moon I could interest you in space mirrors and for a low low price I'll lease you the spot where your harddrive lands for 100 years.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > Throwing a USB stick out the lunar rover window and calling it a data center. Data centers usually do stuff other than sit in the dust. Okay, so here me out: the ultimate cold storage for someone like Iron Mountain. You'd have to understand that you'll need a minimum of 96 hours for retrieval time, and it's gonna be expensive to get that retrieval rocket there and back. Or, build a big dish and send the data via satellite signals.
    - LeifCarrotson 2y ago
      If you want your data to survive a global nuclear armageddon or Chicxulub impactor, a flash drive on the moon isn't a bad place to put it. You know what they say, 3-2-1 backup: three copies of your data, stored on two different types of media, with one copy kept offsite to guard against common-cause data loss. Depending on the cause, off-site could be a difficult place to go!
      - andrewxdiamond 2y ago
        Well an un-hardened flash drive would probably stop working within minutes of being exposed to all those rads, but I’m just being pedantic :p
M95D 2y ago
I wonder if this info came from the Intuitive Machines or from article editor? I can't find anything related to cooling on Intuitive Machines website. BTW, the website looks like investor bait, not a real company that has a future.
- arp242 2y ago
  It came from: "Amit Verma, a professor of electrical engineering at Texas A&M University Kingsville who is not affiliated with the project, says there may be technical advantages to hosting data on the moon as well. Some parts of the moon are permanently shadowed and therefore extremely cold, as low as -173 °C. This means that no energy or water would need to be expended to cool the data center. And the electrical components will perform more efficiently." I'm guessing Verma only thought about the electrical aspects, and simply didn't think about the different atmospheric conditions (i.e. not having one) as that's outside of the conditions an electrical engineer typically deals with. I can see how someone can make such a "oops, didn't think of that" mistake when a journalist asks for a comment.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I don't think the use case requires much compute. It just has to hash the files maybe once per day and transmit: > yes, the files are still here if you need them--well out of reach of pretty much everybody.
foxyv 2y ago
A 1 meter square heat exchanger in a vacuum at 20C will emit about 1 kilowatt at -173C. So about as much as a small space heater per small panel. So a 1 megawatt datacenter would need about 300,000m^2 or 0.3 km^2 of surface area to cool it. But geothermal cooling would be great on the moon too. Run a pipe 2 meters under the lunar surface and it is -21C. I think the whole idea though is to make a low wattage space-stead so you can store copies of Moana out of reach of Disney cease and desist letters.
- solid_fuel 2y ago
  > But geothermal cooling would be great on the moon too. Run a pipe 2 meters under the lunar surface and it is -21C. Isn't the moon geologically dead though - no water or geological movements? I worry this would just result in the ground absorbing the waste heat and eventually becoming too warm to effectively cool anything. Especially because the ground itself would eventually still be limited by the rate of radiative cooling into space, right?
  - szvsw 2y ago
    You have to worry about changing the ground temperature even on earth FYI. When designing district heating/cooling systems with borehole fields, one of the things that you check for is to make sure that you don’t inject too much heat (or extract too much) seasonally - ideally it’s roughly balanced so any drift year over year is small. Obviously things like the diffusivity (so conductivity, mass, density etc) of the ground matter a lot, as does the rate of heat exchange at the surface for it to reject (or absorb) heat to the environment.
    - solid_fuel 2y ago
      Right, I'm roughly aware that's a concern on Earth too which is why I was wondering. How's the thermal conductivity of the moon?
      - szvsw 2y ago
        Looked up some papers, and seemingly super low compared to what I would have initially guessed - probably because it’s porous/fluffy/sharp dust with lots of small voids/less compacted I’m guessing. Like, orders of magnitude less than the ground on earth. Not my area of expertise though and was just cursorily skimming papers for values. Specific heat cap and density seem like what you would expect for any rocky materials.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
RajT88 2y ago
Putting a data center on the moon is not the real business. The real business is the fake contracting companies the founders own who will hoover up all the contracts, do a lot of on-paper contracting making the founders very wealthy before the fake lunar business goes bankrupt.
- grandempire 2y ago
  Unfortunate that this is how pessimistic a startup forum is, but it’s no fault of yours and I don’t think you’re wrong.
  - motorest 2y ago
    > Unfortunate that this is how pessimistic a startup forum is (...) It's a startup forum. People commenting here have real world experience with startups. Might they not be commenting on what they see and know?
    - grandempire 2y ago
      Did you stop after the first half of my sentence?
trhway 2y ago
> If there's no air, then only black body radiation can be used to cool the data center. to put it into numbers - at 80C (353K) 1m2 radiates 880Watts I think though that instead of the Moon we'll be putting data centers into orbit - for 1KWt GPU we'll need 5m2 solar panels and 1m2 radiator - all together under 10kg, ie. $1000 at Starship prices while the GPU itself is $20K+ . The kicker here is that the Starship launch price is cheaper than installing solar on the ground ( $2K/KWt and higher)
scottlawson 2y ago
conduction direct into the ground
amarant 2y ago
You could probably sink plates of some thermally conducting material into the regolith itself? Like geothermal cooling, kinda. Possibly a passive solution could work somewhat? It'll be a temporary solution, the regolith will heat up eventually, but maybe it'll work for long enough?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by M95D 2y ago

dekhn 2y ago

I agree (problem for satellites), but then I wondered if you could dissipate the heat into the ground in a large area.

perihelions 2y ago
Isn't moon sand a very high thermal insulator? edit: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9646997/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9646997/ ("Thermophysical properties of the regolith on the lunar far side revealed by the in situ temperature probing of the Chang’E-4 mission") Comparing against reference tables, it's more insulating than rock wool insulation, https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_429.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_42...
- dekhn 2y ago
  There's a reason I state my dumb ideas out loud :)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- IndrekR 2y ago
  Rockwool is much better thermal insulator in vacuum as well…

JoeAltmaier 2y ago

Conduction through the ground? Or run coolant through buried pipes. Just a pump; no significant energy to cool, just move the coolant.

ok_dad 2y ago
Just ship all that heavy coolant up there first
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  You'd probably use lunar water from the ice that's believed to be in shadowed craters at the poles.
  - ok_dad 2y ago
    Just heat up all that super cooled ice first
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      I like how you’ve done a complete 180 on the problem here.
      - ok_dad 2y ago
        No, I’m saying it’s stupid to put this on the moon. Every time someone says, “just do this” there are complexities and costs that they don’t account for. Where will you get the immense energy needed to melt supercooled ice?! It’s ridiculous that I’m even arguing, it’s such a stupid idea.
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        > No, I’m saying it’s stupid to put this on the moon. I agree with that. Just not for the heating/cooling reasons. > Where will you get the immense energy needed to melt supercooled ice?! The problem was too much heat. Now it's too little heat. You can't have both. The energy comes from the server farm. The coolant comes from the ice. You melt your first ice with the heat from the server farm (or an initial solar field).

mppm 2y ago

They've got it all figured out, you just don't understand. Basically, the plan is: 1. Put data on the moon 2. ??? 3. Profit For more info, check out their promotional video: https://www.lonestarlunar.com/video https://www.lonestarlunar.com/video

uberman 2y ago
This is as big a scam or waste as those solar mirror people. Throwing a USB stick out the lunar rover window and calling it a data center. Data centers usually do stuff other than sit in the dust. Feel free to invest though, perhaps if you feel good about discarding hard drives on the moon I could interest you in space mirrors and for a low low price I'll lease you the spot where your harddrive lands for 100 years.
- dylan604 2y ago
  > Throwing a USB stick out the lunar rover window and calling it a data center. Data centers usually do stuff other than sit in the dust. Okay, so here me out: the ultimate cold storage for someone like Iron Mountain. You'd have to understand that you'll need a minimum of 96 hours for retrieval time, and it's gonna be expensive to get that retrieval rocket there and back. Or, build a big dish and send the data via satellite signals.
  - LeifCarrotson 2y ago
    If you want your data to survive a global nuclear armageddon or Chicxulub impactor, a flash drive on the moon isn't a bad place to put it. You know what they say, 3-2-1 backup: three copies of your data, stored on two different types of media, with one copy kept offsite to guard against common-cause data loss. Depending on the cause, off-site could be a difficult place to go!
    - andrewxdiamond 2y ago
      Well an un-hardened flash drive would probably stop working within minutes of being exposed to all those rads, but I’m just being pedantic :p

M95D 2y ago

I wonder if this info came from the Intuitive Machines or from article editor? I can't find anything related to cooling on Intuitive Machines website. BTW, the website looks like investor bait, not a real company that has a future.

arp242 2y ago
It came from: "Amit Verma, a professor of electrical engineering at Texas A&M University Kingsville who is not affiliated with the project, says there may be technical advantages to hosting data on the moon as well. Some parts of the moon are permanently shadowed and therefore extremely cold, as low as -173 °C. This means that no energy or water would need to be expended to cool the data center. And the electrical components will perform more efficiently." I'm guessing Verma only thought about the electrical aspects, and simply didn't think about the different atmospheric conditions (i.e. not having one) as that's outside of the conditions an electrical engineer typically deals with. I can see how someone can make such a "oops, didn't think of that" mistake when a journalist asks for a comment.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

I don't think the use case requires much compute. It just has to hash the files maybe once per day and transmit: > yes, the files are still here if you need them--well out of reach of pretty much everybody.

foxyv 2y ago

A 1 meter square heat exchanger in a vacuum at 20C will emit about 1 kilowatt at -173C. So about as much as a small space heater per small panel. So a 1 megawatt datacenter would need about 300,000m^2 or 0.3 km^2 of surface area to cool it. But geothermal cooling would be great on the moon too. Run a pipe 2 meters under the lunar surface and it is -21C. I think the whole idea though is to make a low wattage space-stead so you can store copies of Moana out of reach of Disney cease and desist letters.

solid_fuel 2y ago
> But geothermal cooling would be great on the moon too. Run a pipe 2 meters under the lunar surface and it is -21C. Isn't the moon geologically dead though - no water or geological movements? I worry this would just result in the ground absorbing the waste heat and eventually becoming too warm to effectively cool anything. Especially because the ground itself would eventually still be limited by the rate of radiative cooling into space, right?
- szvsw 2y ago
  You have to worry about changing the ground temperature even on earth FYI. When designing district heating/cooling systems with borehole fields, one of the things that you check for is to make sure that you don’t inject too much heat (or extract too much) seasonally - ideally it’s roughly balanced so any drift year over year is small. Obviously things like the diffusivity (so conductivity, mass, density etc) of the ground matter a lot, as does the rate of heat exchange at the surface for it to reject (or absorb) heat to the environment.
  - solid_fuel 2y ago
    Right, I'm roughly aware that's a concern on Earth too which is why I was wondering. How's the thermal conductivity of the moon?
    - szvsw 2y ago
      Looked up some papers, and seemingly super low compared to what I would have initially guessed - probably because it’s porous/fluffy/sharp dust with lots of small voids/less compacted I’m guessing. Like, orders of magnitude less than the ground on earth. Not my area of expertise though and was just cursorily skimming papers for values. Specific heat cap and density seem like what you would expect for any rocky materials.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

RajT88 2y ago

Putting a data center on the moon is not the real business. The real business is the fake contracting companies the founders own who will hoover up all the contracts, do a lot of on-paper contracting making the founders very wealthy before the fake lunar business goes bankrupt.

grandempire 2y ago
Unfortunate that this is how pessimistic a startup forum is, but it’s no fault of yours and I don’t think you’re wrong.
- motorest 2y ago
  > Unfortunate that this is how pessimistic a startup forum is (...) It's a startup forum. People commenting here have real world experience with startups. Might they not be commenting on what they see and know?
  - grandempire 2y ago
    Did you stop after the first half of my sentence?

trhway 2y ago

> If there's no air, then only black body radiation can be used to cool the data center. to put it into numbers - at 80C (353K) 1m2 radiates 880Watts I think though that instead of the Moon we'll be putting data centers into orbit - for 1KWt GPU we'll need 5m2 solar panels and 1m2 radiator - all together under 10kg, ie. $1000 at Starship prices while the GPU itself is $20K+ . The kicker here is that the Starship launch price is cheaper than installing solar on the ground ( $2K/KWt and higher)

scottlawson 2y ago

conduction direct into the ground

amarant 2y ago

You could probably sink plates of some thermally conducting material into the regolith itself? Like geothermal cooling, kinda. Possibly a passive solution could work somewhat? It'll be a temporary solution, the regolith will heat up eventually, but maybe it'll work for long enough?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]