3 ms·

Yes, you get much more radiation from the sun and other sources. How do you do cooling? Radiators the size of small moons? Also hard radiation is not something

by lukan 6mo ago

Yes, you get much more radiation from the sun and other sources. How do you do cooling? Radiators the size of small moons? Also hard radiation is not something transistors like.

svantana 6mo ago
The joint solar panel + computer system will be pretty close to an ideal black body, which near earth will have an average temperature of about 10°C. And radiation is an issue, but starlink seems to work so I don't see why this wouldn't.
- lukan 6mo ago
  Starlink does not need so much energy as a datacenter.
  - svantana 6mo ago
    I don't follow your logic. I mentioned starlink as an example of transistors (and solar panels) in space dealing with radiation.
    - lukan 6mo ago
      Well I was talking about heat. But regarding radiation, there is a long history of transistors in space dealing with radiation. But ... there is also a whole science how to deal with making it reliable: answer, expensive redundancy. And about starlink .. as far as I know the fail quite often but work, because of redundancy. So they get replaced. If you want to ship GPU's to the orbit, then this surely works somehow, if you are willing to replace them often, which is expensive. Or you shield them, but then you will need to get up heavy shields. In general, of course computers work in space, but it is not cheap.
- AntiUSAbah 6mo ago
  Of course it works, the question is how this would look like and if its financial feasable. You make a H100, ship it to a space dock, load it onto a rocket (rocket requires fuuel, the rocket, etc.) send it up, deploy it, monitor it live 24/7, have means of adjusting its orbit, if it breaks, its immediade full loss, otherwise it will degenerate faster in space than on earth, now it needs a high speed up/downlink to do anything reasonable which also requires a base station. The base station has to track this satelite. One H100 costs 40k, consumes 700 Watt peak and need probably at a minimum 5 square meter of area for cooling and solar. The colossus datacenter from musk has 250.000 of these. Now you have to track 250.000 single satelites, you have to coordinate the communication between the, up and downlink to earth. 250.000 * 5 square meter of area. This alone increases the potential debris in space. And this is ONE 300 MW Datacenter replacement. ONE.
  - kamaal 6mo ago
    Everything you wrote is some definition of hard, but all doable. None of this is purely in the territory of 'known' impossible(like FTL travel). Now different people have different points where they quit when things get hard. This is true for even everyday things in life. Quitting triggers exist for people at various points in the ladder. The end of ladder and path both exist, its upto you to decide if you wish to continue climbing, or give up and quit. Your mileage may vary.
    - AntiUSAbah 6mo ago
      My problem is not the doing thing but the economy of it. We are nowere near any resource limitation on planet earth for AI Datacenters. Musk sells this story because he has Starship which needs payload to make financial sense. The payload doesn't exist so he inventes DC in Space. Its the same thing as SpaceX buying Tesla Cybertrucks. His old colossus datacenter is a 300MW Datacenter he now rents out to Anthropic because he doesn't even need his own compute. Colossus DC is probably 10x cheaper than his whole Space AI DC Story and will be for a long time.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 6mo ago
      > Everything you wrote is some definition of hard, but all doable The first line of the post that you are supposedly replying to is: > Of course it works, the question is how this would look like and if its financial feasable. Unless is cost-comparable to a data centre on Earth, and I am told that it very much is not, then there is no financial feasibility for space datacentres.
- orbisvicis 6mo ago
  More energy will be required than radiation absorbed by a spherical (ish) data center. You'll have massive solar panels piping energy in, and so the temperature would by higher than thermal equilibrium at that distance.

by lukan 6mo ago

Yes, you get much more radiation from the sun and other sources. How do you do cooling? Radiators the size of small moons? Also hard radiation is not something transistors like.

svantana 6mo ago

The joint solar panel + computer system will be pretty close to an ideal black body, which near earth will have an average temperature of about 10°C. And radiation is an issue, but starlink seems to work so I don't see why this wouldn't.

lukan 6mo ago
Starlink does not need so much energy as a datacenter.
- svantana 6mo ago
  I don't follow your logic. I mentioned starlink as an example of transistors (and solar panels) in space dealing with radiation.
  - lukan 6mo ago
    Well I was talking about heat. But regarding radiation, there is a long history of transistors in space dealing with radiation. But ... there is also a whole science how to deal with making it reliable: answer, expensive redundancy. And about starlink .. as far as I know the fail quite often but work, because of redundancy. So they get replaced. If you want to ship GPU's to the orbit, then this surely works somehow, if you are willing to replace them often, which is expensive. Or you shield them, but then you will need to get up heavy shields. In general, of course computers work in space, but it is not cheap.
AntiUSAbah 6mo ago
Of course it works, the question is how this would look like and if its financial feasable. You make a H100, ship it to a space dock, load it onto a rocket (rocket requires fuuel, the rocket, etc.) send it up, deploy it, monitor it live 24/7, have means of adjusting its orbit, if it breaks, its immediade full loss, otherwise it will degenerate faster in space than on earth, now it needs a high speed up/downlink to do anything reasonable which also requires a base station. The base station has to track this satelite. One H100 costs 40k, consumes 700 Watt peak and need probably at a minimum 5 square meter of area for cooling and solar. The colossus datacenter from musk has 250.000 of these. Now you have to track 250.000 single satelites, you have to coordinate the communication between the, up and downlink to earth. 250.000 * 5 square meter of area. This alone increases the potential debris in space. And this is ONE 300 MW Datacenter replacement. ONE.
- kamaal 6mo ago
  Everything you wrote is some definition of hard, but all doable. None of this is purely in the territory of 'known' impossible(like FTL travel). Now different people have different points where they quit when things get hard. This is true for even everyday things in life. Quitting triggers exist for people at various points in the ladder. The end of ladder and path both exist, its upto you to decide if you wish to continue climbing, or give up and quit. Your mileage may vary.
  - AntiUSAbah 6mo ago
    My problem is not the doing thing but the economy of it. We are nowere near any resource limitation on planet earth for AI Datacenters. Musk sells this story because he has Starship which needs payload to make financial sense. The payload doesn't exist so he inventes DC in Space. Its the same thing as SpaceX buying Tesla Cybertrucks. His old colossus datacenter is a 300MW Datacenter he now rents out to Anthropic because he doesn't even need his own compute. Colossus DC is probably 10x cheaper than his whole Space AI DC Story and will be for a long time.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 6mo ago
    > Everything you wrote is some definition of hard, but all doable The first line of the post that you are supposedly replying to is: > Of course it works, the question is how this would look like and if its financial feasable. Unless is cost-comparable to a data centre on Earth, and I am told that it very much is not, then there is no financial feasibility for space datacentres.
orbisvicis 6mo ago
More energy will be required than radiation absorbed by a spherical (ish) data center. You'll have massive solar panels piping energy in, and so the temperature would by higher than thermal equilibrium at that distance.