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Everything relating to a datacentre that you can do in space you can do more easily on earth, regardless of 10,000x inference growth or supply chain or producti

Everything relating to a datacentre that you can do in space you can do more easily on earth, regardless of 10,000x inference growth or supply chain or production or starship or silicon. I just don't think you can be cost competitive with earth bound data centres if 'protected from the poors' isn't a selling point. By the way, 10,000x inference growth would look like what happened with cryptocurrency mining - after a couple of years, you'd be needing to upgrade all your machines with ASICs and the market would be flooded with very cheap graphics cards. I doubt that upgrading space data centres would be fun.

vessenes 7mo ago
Zoning is one area that’s better in space. And power density for solar is another. I don’t get your mining analogy though - a non upgradable data center pod is either going to pay off its capital costs or it won’t. Once it has, any revenue is close to 100% profit. 10k demand increase is the opposite of mining dynamics: there you get a 10k supply increase that the price has to support, in combination with more efficient silicon. Here the demand drives revenue and earnings. If there’s some crazy inflection point in chips then you’ll still have all the power infra in space - you can just like cut the old pod and hook up a new one: or more likely manufacturing economies of scale mean you probably just keep sending up new systems and put the old ones on work loads they can manage at market prices.
- deleted 7mo ago
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- CamperBob2 7mo ago
  Zoning is one area that’s better in space. Not really, though? The idea that Earth-based data centers need to be built in populated, developed areas is indeed dumb, yet it seems to be inexplicably baked into everyone's assumptions. In particular, the small discrete data centers that Musk wants to launch could go anywhere on Earth. They could be powered by local PV arrays and batteries, they can be cooled by smaller radiators than they would need to use in space, and they could be networked via Starlink or something very much like it, just as they would need to be networked in space. There's nothing special about space, it just costs more to get there. If he wants them to be out of reach of governments, why not put them on container ships in international waters? There are thousands at sea at any given time, and I'm sure their operators would be happy to rent them out. Hell, put them on dirigibles that just drift around in international airspace for months at a time. Anywhere but space. And power density for solar is another. Does power density matter in terrestrial solar applications? If so, why? These things can and should be deployed in oceans, deserts, and trackless wastelands. Who cares how big the solar panels are?
  - rincebrain 7mo ago
    The problem is that you need humans to run datacenters, and so that puts ceilings on how far away from humans you can put them without the humans no longer being willing to commute there. And the cost of building all the infra to support humans living in an area that humans are not already populating is enormous.
    - CamperBob2 7mo ago
      Well, evidently you don't need humans to run datacenters, if we're talking about launching them into LEO! Here's an idea, let's do this instead: we put them in the desert, or on boats or zeppelins or whatever, and we pretend they're in space. If anybody asks, those fuckers are in space, man. Computin' in the cosmos.
    - kybernetikos 7mo ago
      > you need humans to run datacenters. As far as I can tell from random articles online, it seems that as a rule of thumb, you need about 6 humans +1.5 humans per megawatt - and that's just for running the datacenter part, different people maintain the power generation infrastructure. Now, if you have to house those people in space or fly them up whenever they have to do anything, that's going to destroy your budget. If you want to assume a level of automation that makes that unnecessary, that's fine, but then you need to also assume that same level of automation in earth based data centers too, and everything that goes with that.
  - vessenes 7mo ago
    All questions/comments that I don't know enough to opine on. But, power density in terrestrial I think we can do some math and reasoning: First, oceans are WAYYY more hostile than space. Oxidation + salt water + .. I don't think it's even close there. I don't think they are comparable. Deserts and trackless wastelands - I have some experience with sub-Saharan logistics; a couple of points -- I would not be surprised if actual deployment to trackless wastelands is more expensive than lift. Analysts estimate $55k-85k per ton under starship. (Elon estimates much lower; let's stick with low end of analyst numbers). Trackless wastelands are really hard to get to. For instance, I've seen a fuel truck tipped over on its side in a river next to a small tow truck tipped on its side in a river next to a larger crane trying to rescue the original truck and the "rescue" truck in Southern Kenya -- by no means a trackless waste -- probably a week long ordeal, JUST for diesel delivery. This was in an area under former British rule with roads and stuff. Second, trackless wastelands are really hard to find. There are people everywhere, man. And they like free metal, free power, etc. If we imagine instead just deploying to West Texas, I think the square footage does add up. 40 foot container -> call it 16 racks. Nvidia estimates 600kw per rack in 2027 with Vera Rubin(!!JFC!!). So, 10MW of power per container. Let's imagine we magically found water in West Texas and have a PUE of 1.2, so 12MW. Solar panels are like 20 W/sq ft. I got lazy; Claude tells me with 2.5x land needed for spacing, infra, etc, 6.5 peak sun hours, a couple of acres for storage, roughly 130 acres (0.2 sq miles) + 53 Tesla megapacks for storage per container. I'll revise my above thoughts - there is NO WAY it's cheaper to do that in trackless wastes than space. I don't know about west Texas, but I don't think it's crazy to think that you might want to spend five years on engineering and production scaling instead of town and county and state and federal permitting.

vessenes 7mo ago

Zoning is one area that’s better in space. And power density for solar is another. I don’t get your mining analogy though - a non upgradable data center pod is either going to pay off its capital costs or it won’t. Once it has, any revenue is close to 100% profit. 10k demand increase is the opposite of mining dynamics: there you get a 10k supply increase that the price has to support, in combination with more efficient silicon. Here the demand drives revenue and earnings. If there’s some crazy inflection point in chips then you’ll still have all the power infra in space - you can just like cut the old pod and hook up a new one: or more likely manufacturing economies of scale mean you probably just keep sending up new systems and put the old ones on work loads they can manage at market prices.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
CamperBob2 7mo ago
Zoning is one area that’s better in space. Not really, though? The idea that Earth-based data centers need to be built in populated, developed areas is indeed dumb, yet it seems to be inexplicably baked into everyone's assumptions. In particular, the small discrete data centers that Musk wants to launch could go anywhere on Earth. They could be powered by local PV arrays and batteries, they can be cooled by smaller radiators than they would need to use in space, and they could be networked via Starlink or something very much like it, just as they would need to be networked in space. There's nothing special about space, it just costs more to get there. If he wants them to be out of reach of governments, why not put them on container ships in international waters? There are thousands at sea at any given time, and I'm sure their operators would be happy to rent them out. Hell, put them on dirigibles that just drift around in international airspace for months at a time. Anywhere but space. And power density for solar is another. Does power density matter in terrestrial solar applications? If so, why? These things can and should be deployed in oceans, deserts, and trackless wastelands. Who cares how big the solar panels are?
- rincebrain 7mo ago
  The problem is that you need humans to run datacenters, and so that puts ceilings on how far away from humans you can put them without the humans no longer being willing to commute there. And the cost of building all the infra to support humans living in an area that humans are not already populating is enormous.
  - CamperBob2 7mo ago
    Well, evidently you don't need humans to run datacenters, if we're talking about launching them into LEO! Here's an idea, let's do this instead: we put them in the desert, or on boats or zeppelins or whatever, and we pretend they're in space. If anybody asks, those fuckers are in space, man. Computin' in the cosmos.
  - kybernetikos 7mo ago
    > you need humans to run datacenters. As far as I can tell from random articles online, it seems that as a rule of thumb, you need about 6 humans +1.5 humans per megawatt - and that's just for running the datacenter part, different people maintain the power generation infrastructure. Now, if you have to house those people in space or fly them up whenever they have to do anything, that's going to destroy your budget. If you want to assume a level of automation that makes that unnecessary, that's fine, but then you need to also assume that same level of automation in earth based data centers too, and everything that goes with that.
- vessenes 7mo ago
  All questions/comments that I don't know enough to opine on. But, power density in terrestrial I think we can do some math and reasoning: First, oceans are WAYYY more hostile than space. Oxidation + salt water + .. I don't think it's even close there. I don't think they are comparable. Deserts and trackless wastelands - I have some experience with sub-Saharan logistics; a couple of points -- I would not be surprised if actual deployment to trackless wastelands is more expensive than lift. Analysts estimate $55k-85k per ton under starship. (Elon estimates much lower; let's stick with low end of analyst numbers). Trackless wastelands are really hard to get to. For instance, I've seen a fuel truck tipped over on its side in a river next to a small tow truck tipped on its side in a river next to a larger crane trying to rescue the original truck and the "rescue" truck in Southern Kenya -- by no means a trackless waste -- probably a week long ordeal, JUST for diesel delivery. This was in an area under former British rule with roads and stuff. Second, trackless wastelands are really hard to find. There are people everywhere, man. And they like free metal, free power, etc. If we imagine instead just deploying to West Texas, I think the square footage does add up. 40 foot container -> call it 16 racks. Nvidia estimates 600kw per rack in 2027 with Vera Rubin(!!JFC!!). So, 10MW of power per container. Let's imagine we magically found water in West Texas and have a PUE of 1.2, so 12MW. Solar panels are like 20 W/sq ft. I got lazy; Claude tells me with 2.5x land needed for spacing, infra, etc, 6.5 peak sun hours, a couple of acres for storage, roughly 130 acres (0.2 sq miles) + 53 Tesla megapacks for storage per container. I'll revise my above thoughts - there is NO WAY it's cheaper to do that in trackless wastes than space. I don't know about west Texas, but I don't think it's crazy to think that you might want to spend five years on engineering and production scaling instead of town and county and state and federal permitting.