3 ms·

From the post they claim 8 times more solar energy and no need for batteries because they are continuously in the sun. Presumably at some scale and some cost/kg

From the post they claim 8 times more solar energy and no need for batteries because they are continuously in the sun. Presumably at some scale and some cost/kg to orbit this starts to pencil out?

ceejayoz 11mo ago
You're trading an 8x smaller low-maintenance solid-state solar field for a massive probably high-maintenance liquid-based radiator field.
- wongarsu 11mo ago
  Can't be high maintenance if we just make it uncrewed, unserviceable and send any data center with catastrophically failed cooling to Point Nemo /s
  - TeMPOraL 11mo ago
    If it can be all mostly solid-state, then it's low-maintenace. Also design it to burn up before MTTF, like all cool space kids do these days. Not gonna be worse at Starlink unless this gets massively scaled up, which it's meant to be (ecological footprint left as an exercise to the reader).
moralestapia 11mo ago
No infrastructure, no need for security, no premises, no water. I think it's a good idea, actually.
- ceejayoz 11mo ago
  > No infrastructure 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.
  - moralestapia 11mo ago
    This is not a giant space station ... >There will be if launch costs get low enough to make any of this feasible. I don't know what you mean by that.
    - ceejayoz 11mo ago
      > This is not a giant space station … Fundamentally, it is, just in the form of a swarm. With added challenges! > I don't know what you mean by that. If you can get to space cheaply enough for an orbital AI datacenter to make financial sense, so can your security threats.
      - TeMPOraL 11mo ago
        > Fundamentally, it is, just in the form of a swarm. With added challenges! Right, in the same sense that existing Starlink constellation is a Death Star. This paper does not describe a giant space station. It describes a couple dozen of satellites in a formation, using gravity and optics to get extra bandwidth for inter-satellite links. The example they gave uses 81 satellites, which is a number made trivial by Starlink (it's also in the blog release itself, so no "not clicking through to the paper" excuses here!). (In a gist, the paper seems to be describing a small constellation as useful compute unit that can be scaled, indefinitely - basically replicating the scaling design used in terrestrial ML data centers.)
        ceejayoz 11mo ago
        > Right, in the same sense that existing Starlink constellation is a Death Star. "The cluster radius is R=1 km, with the distance between next-nearest-neighbor satellites oscillating between ~100–200m, under the influence of Earth’s gravity." This does not describe anything like Starlink. (Nor does Starlink do heavy onboard computation.) > The example they gave uses 81 satellites… Which is great if your whole datacenter fits in a few dozen racks, but that's not what Google's talking about here.
        11mo ago

From the post they claim 8 times more solar energy and no need for batteries because they are continuously in the sun. Presumably at some scale and some cost/kg to orbit this starts to pencil out?

ceejayoz 11mo ago

You're trading an 8x smaller low-maintenance solid-state solar field for a massive probably high-maintenance liquid-based radiator field.

wongarsu 11mo ago
Can't be high maintenance if we just make it uncrewed, unserviceable and send any data center with catastrophically failed cooling to Point Nemo /s
- TeMPOraL 11mo ago
  If it can be all mostly solid-state, then it's low-maintenace. Also design it to burn up before MTTF, like all cool space kids do these days. Not gonna be worse at Starlink unless this gets massively scaled up, which it's meant to be (ecological footprint left as an exercise to the reader).

moralestapia 11mo ago

No infrastructure, no need for security, no premises, no water. I think it's a good idea, actually.

ceejayoz 11mo ago
> No infrastructure 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.
- moralestapia 11mo ago
  This is not a giant space station ... >There will be if launch costs get low enough to make any of this feasible. I don't know what you mean by that.
  - ceejayoz 11mo ago
    > This is not a giant space station … Fundamentally, it is, just in the form of a swarm. With added challenges! > I don't know what you mean by that. If you can get to space cheaply enough for an orbital AI datacenter to make financial sense, so can your security threats.
    - TeMPOraL 11mo ago
      > Fundamentally, it is, just in the form of a swarm. With added challenges! Right, in the same sense that existing Starlink constellation is a Death Star. This paper does not describe a giant space station. It describes a couple dozen of satellites in a formation, using gravity and optics to get extra bandwidth for inter-satellite links. The example they gave uses 81 satellites, which is a number made trivial by Starlink (it's also in the blog release itself, so no "not clicking through to the paper" excuses here!). (In a gist, the paper seems to be describing a small constellation as useful compute unit that can be scaled, indefinitely - basically replicating the scaling design used in terrestrial ML data centers.)
      - ceejayoz 11mo ago
        > Right, in the same sense that existing Starlink constellation is a Death Star. "The cluster radius is R=1 km, with the distance between next-nearest-neighbor satellites oscillating between ~100–200m, under the influence of Earth’s gravity." This does not describe anything like Starlink. (Nor does Starlink do heavy onboard computation.) > The example they gave uses 81 satellites… Which is great if your whole datacenter fits in a few dozen racks, but that's not what Google's talking about here.
        11mo ago