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This sounds amazing until something needs replacement. Until data centers on earth has a 99.99% (or higher) level of autonomous operation with very minimal requ
by Izmaki 5mo ago
This sounds amazing until something needs replacement. Until data centers on earth has a 99.99% (or higher) level of autonomous operation with very minimal requirements to maintenance and part replacements, they're not sending anything into orbit...
- eigenspace 5mo agoI also sounds amazing until you remember how hard it is to cool something when your only option is radiative cooling.
- Drakim 5mo agoYou could also transfer the heat to tungsten rods and drop them on rivaling earth-bound data centers.
- kergonath 5mo agoWhy tungsten? In terms of thermal conductivity, It’s way worse than silver and copper and on par with good aluminium alloys. Those are cheaper and much lighter (so again much cheaper to put into orbit).
- eigenspace 5mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment The idea is to use tungsten because of the high melting point and hardness so that it survives re-entry in order to best strike the rival datacentre.
- kergonath 5mo agoThis has zero advantage over drones or ICBMs. It’s a joke, a Cold War fever dream.
- eigenspace 5mo agoIt was a joke, but now it's a totally serious proposal because it can help with heat dissipation in orbital datacenters. Very serious. No joking here.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- raincole 5mo agoIt sounds amazing for 14yo boys who are not specifically into hard sci-fi.
- sebzim4500 5mo agoI guess we'll see, because most 14 year olds don't have a lot of money to put into SpaceX.
- vkou 5mo ago'Stock goes up so we buy it' has sufficient explanatory power to resolve this conundrum.
- flyinglizard 5mo ago[dead]
- kortilla 5mo agoStarlink already operates this way. You don’t replace parts, you launch new sats.