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We don’t even have a habitable structure in space when the ISS falls, there is no world in which space datacenters are a thing in the next 10, I’d argue even 30
by taurath 9mo ago
We don’t even have a habitable structure in space when the ISS falls, there is no world in which space datacenters are a thing in the next 10, I’d argue even 30 years. People really need to ground themselves in reality.
Edit: okay Tiangong - but that is not a data center.
- nickff 9mo agoWho is “we”? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station
- taurath 9mo agoGood point. Still a long, long way from data centers.
- whamlastxmas 9mo agoWe have 15,000 satellites in orbit that are almost literally the exact same premise currently being proposed - a computer with solar panels attached. We've being doing exactly this for decades.
- TheBlight 9mo agoOk then short SpaceX stock when it IPOs.
- taurath 9mo agoWhat does stock price have to do with anything? That someone could put a data center in space for the price of 100 years of eliminating world hunger doesn’t mean shit.
- satvikpendem 9mo agoPeople always make this claim about world hunger elimination with no sources. Keep in mind we make more than enough calories to feed everyone on the planet many times over, it's a problem of distribution, of getting the food to the right areas and continuing cultivation for self sufficiency.
- taurath 9mo agoThat’s right, it’s an allocation of resources problem, and some people seem to control almost all the resources.
- satvikpendem 9mo agoEven the most magnanimous allocators cannot defeat the realities of boots on the ground in terms of distribution. It is a very difficult problem that cannot be solved top down, the only solution we've seen is growth of economic activity via capitalistic means, lifting millions, billions out of poverty as Asia has done in the last century for example.
- lpcvoid 9mo agoI argue that if you have literal hundreds of billions of hard cash to burn for stupid things like AI datacenters, you could afford to make the lives of millions of starving people not suck instead, pretty easily so. But to do that, you'd have to try, and that would mean actually doing something good for humanity. Can't have that as a billionaire.
- westpfelia 9mo agoOk but what if I shoot a car into space and buy my own social media company. Surely thats a better use of billions!
- cbeach 9mo ago> SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa… > [Kenyan Economist] Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop. > SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty. > Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/kenyan-economics-expert-development-aid-is-one-reason-for-africas-problems-so-for-gods-sake-please-just-stop/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/kenyan-economics-expert-devel...
- Sohcahtoa82 9mo agoAs if company performance actually affected stock price when it comes to anything Elon Musk touches. For fuck's sake, TSLA has a P/E of a whopping *392*. There is zero justification for how overvalued that stock is. In a sane world, I should be able to short it and 10x my money, but people are buying into Musk's hype on FSD, Robotaxi, and whatever the hell robot they're making. Even if you expected them to be successes, they'd need to 20x the company's entire revenue to justify the current market cap.
- techblueberry 9mo agoWhy would you short the stock?
- CamperBob2 9mo agoIf you're hellbent on arguing with a cult, it will be much cheaper to go down to your local Church of Scientology and try to convince them that their e-meter doesn't work.
- int0x29 9mo ago“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” - John Maynard Keynes
- cbeach 9mo ago[flagged]
- tzs 9mo agoI don't think any of the companies that say they are working on space data centers intend them to be habitable.
- IX-103 9mo agoI don't know, 10 years seems reasonable for development. There's not that much new technology that needs to be developed. Cooling and communications would just require minor changes to existing designs. Other systems may be able to be lifted wholesale with minimal integration. I think if there were obstacles to building data centers on the ground then we might see them in orbit within the next ten years. I don't see those obstacles appearing though.
- doctorwho42 9mo agoThe same things you are saying about data centers in space was said by similar people 10-15 years ago when Elon musk said SpaceX would have a man on Mars in 10-15 years. We have had the tech to do it since the 90's, we just needed to invest into it. Same thing with Elon Musks hyperloop, aka the atmospheric train (or vactrain) which has been an idea since 1799! And how far has Elon Musks boring company come to building even a test loop? Yeah, in theory you could build a data center in space. But unless you have a background in the limitations of space engineering/design brings, you don't truly understand what you are saying. A single AI data center server rack takes up the same energy load of 0.3 to 1 international space station. So by saying Elon musk can reasonable achieve this, is wild to anyone who has done any engineering work with space based tech. Every solar panel generates heat, the racks generate heat, the data communication system generates, heat... Every kW of power generated and every kW of power consumes needs a radiator. And it's not like water cooling, you are trying to radiate heat off into a vacuum. That is a technical challenge and size, the amount of tons to orbit needed to do this... Let alone outside of low earth... Its a moonshot project for sure. And like I said above, Elon musk hasnt really followed through with any of his moonshots.
- throwup238 9mo ago> A single AI data center server rack takes up the same energy load of 0.3 to 1 international space station. The ISS is powered by eight Solar Array Wings. Each wing weighs about 1,050kg. The station also has two radiator wings with three radiator orbital replacement units weighing about 1,100kg each. That's about 15,000 kg total so if the ISS can power three racks, that's 5,000kg of payload per rack not including the rack or any other support structure, shielding, heat distribution like heat pipes, and so on. Assuming a Falcon Heavy with 60,000 kg payload, that's 12 racks launched for about $100 million. That's basically tripling or quadrupling (at least) the cost of each rack, assuming that's the only extra cost and there's zero maintenance.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> We don’t even have a habitable structure in space Silicon is way more forgiving than biology. This isn’t an argument for this proposal. But there is no technical connection between humans in space and data centers other than launch-cost synergies.
- fluoridation 9mo agoOkay, but a human being represents what, 200 W of power? The ISS has a crew of 3, so that's less than a beefy single user AI workstation at full tilt. If the question is whether it's practical to put 1-2 kW worth of computing power in orbit, the answer is obviously yes, but somehow I don't think that's what's meant by "datacenter in space".
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- rlt 9mo agoWe also don't have fully reusable launch vehicles, yet. But we will shortly. That will decrease the cost of launch by at least an order of magnitude. Still there will be a lot of engineering problems to solve. 2-3 years seems very short, but 10 years seems long to me.