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Why space data centers? What advantage this would have? Cooling will be a big issue, while it is easily solved on the planet earth, as we have water, air that c
by piokoch 6mo ago
Why space data centers? What advantage this would have? Cooling will be a big issue, while it is easily solved on the planet earth, as we have water, air that can transfer heat away.
- nish__ 6mo agoYou don't have to buy real estate.
- iso1631 6mo agoLand is pretty much irellevent in the cost. The Utah Data Center [0] is a 200 acre plot with 35 acres of buildings. Even prime farmland values is arround $10k an acre, or $2m, but for other land you're talking $400k for that much land [1] It uses 65MW. The solar panels alone to generate that cost $100 per kW in bulk, or $6.5m. That's 570GWh a year. Mount Signal 1 Solar plant, from over a decade ago, produces about that currently. Total cost $365m [2]. Then there's the lifetime? What do you do in 36 months time when you want to replace the hardware with the latest generation? In an earthbound one you turn off the rack, remove the old kit, put the new kit in. In space, it just burns up in the atmosphere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center [1] https://www.land.com/property/201-acres-in-brown-county-nebraska/25350821/ https://www.land.com/property/201-acres-in-brown-county-nebr... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar
- nish__ 6mo agoNot for the data center, for the fiber lines.
- trhway 6mo ago>Cooling will be a big issue a 1m2 at 70C radiates 785 Watt. Seems thet cooling will be more simple than on Earth.
- pretendgeneer 6mo agoA 1m2 heatsink/fan on earth can sink kWs. My heatpump is about 1m2 area and can sink 15kw. Seems earth is at least 20x times better.
- trhway 6mo agoin space 1m2 of thin metal will radiate those 785 watt. No fan, no heatpump, nothing. Only the launch cost. Which given the projected Starship launch cost will be cheaper than installation on Earth.
- iso1631 6mo agoIf you build a pyramid with the base pointing to the sun (as solar), and a "height" about 5 times the base in constant shadow, with decent internal circulation, that will operate at sub-20C just from the two radiative sides pointing away from Earth (you make the earth pointing sides reflective) Cooling isn't an issue.
- bigfatkitten 6mo agoThey don’t have any advantages at all. People point to the cost of land, but if being physically inaccessible isn’t a problem, then there are lots of cheap places on Earth you can deploy data centres too at far lower cost than launching them into orbit.
- iso1631 6mo agoDesert land is free. Floating data centres in the middle of the pacific is free. If a state, or even rich billionaire, wanted to take out your data centre in low earth orbit, it's only a few million dollars to launch a retrograde rocket which explodes into 10 ton of shrapnel, or even less to forget the orbit and just launch it directly up.
- philipwhiuk 6mo agoYou can do the same to the ones in the Pacific and desert too. It's a declaration of war much the same.
- philipwhiuk 6mo agoFor now there's a regulatory oversight advantage (or rather lack of same).
- bigfatkitten 6mo agoThere’s a whole lot more oversight, from the radiocommunications and aviation safety regulators.
- sublinear 6mo agoDefense systems in space need to be... in space. I don't think people are looking at this the right way. They need to be inaccessible to terrestrial and air weapons, have lower latency, not be dependent on power plants, etc.
- RobotToaster 6mo agoThat's true, but they're also very vulnerable to ground based LASERs.
- iso1631 6mo agoFar easier for someone like Iran or China or the US to take out an LEO satellite than an underground data centre, or even a surface on in the case of DCs in US or China.
- sublinear 6mo agoIt's also pretty easy to launch another one into orbit to replace it? I'm not sure I understand what you mean. We can have all these options simultaneously. The easiest targets are where the faster paced more offensive action is going to be. People have been talking about waging war in space for many decades now. All the arguments for and against it were made a very long time ago, and it was decided it's a hell of a lot better that way. Even a nuclear blast in orbit is more tolerable. Space superiority is just too damn appealing as the next frontier after land, air, and sea where we've been stuck in stalemate for a while. It's perfectly natural we go to space for this, including the datacenters.
- ericmay 6mo agoI don’t think Iran has the capability to shoot down LEO satellites. Kind of weird to loop them in with China here other than China helping Iran.
- iso1631 6mo agoYou need about 2,500m/s delta V to reach LEO altitude. Iranian long range rockets are well in that range. It's thus far easier for Iran to hit an LEO DC than one in Colorado