3 ms·
Communication is a well-understood problem, and SpaceX already has Starlink. They might need pretty high bandwidth, but that's not necessarily much of a proble
by elihu 8mo ago
Communication is a well-understood problem, and SpaceX already has Starlink. They might need pretty high bandwidth, but that's not necessarily much of a problem in space. Latency could be a problem, except that AI training isn't the sort of problem where you care about latency.
I'd be curious where exactly they plan to put these datacenters... In low Earth orbit they would eventually reenter, which makes them a pollution source and you'd have no solar power half the time.
Parking them at the Earth-Sun L1 point would be better for solar power, but it would be more expensive to get stuff there.
- WalterBright 8mo ago> you'd have no solar power half the time Polar orbit.
- woooooo 8mo agoSeasons mess that up unless you're burning fuel to make minor plane changes every day. Otherwise you have an equinox where your plane faces the sun (equivalent to an equatorial orbit) and a solstice where your plane is parallel to the sun (the ideal case).
- WalterBright 8mo agoTrue. It would a tradeoff with the fuel consumed vs doubling power output.
- oliv5900 8mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit A Sun Synchronous orbit at the Day-Night terminator solves this issue
- WalterBright 8mo agoI didn't think of that! I should have had a V8. Thanks for the info.
- elihu 8mo agoHuh, I didn't know that that was possible without burning fuel. Kind of wild that it only works because the Earth has an equatorial bulge and isn't an exact sphere.
- mr_toad 8mo agoSatellites can spin! You also need to deal with precession and other minor chances in the orbit, but they’re all solved problems.
- tacticus 8mo ago> SpaceX already has Starlink. They might need pretty high bandwidth you mean the network that has less capacity than a fibre pair per coverage area?