I am just honestly confused. There seem to be no logical reason for it, except that it would raise the stock value of rocket producers like SpaceX and Blue Origin.

  • wraekscadu@vargar.org
    6·
    8 days ago

    Right now, it’s a terribly dumb idea. Here’s why:

    • Getting shit to space is expensive
    • Cooling those data centers would require radiative cooling. The radiators for that would have to be crazy huge.
    • It’s economically unviable when you can build data centers on earth.

    For me, this looks exactly like the “we’re going to Mars, so invest in our space company, yipeeeee” thing.

    That being said, could we see space based computation in the future? Sure. Again, here’s why:

    • It’s more to do with simple energy consumption (not just for computation, but just energy consumption in general).
    • Energy consumed still stays on the planet as heat. Slowly, it radiates away to space. The speed of radiation however scales with the surface area of the planet. Meaning, there’s a strict upper limit of how much “energy consumption” we can do on earth before causing crazy global warming due to this waste heat. Note this is NOT green house gas caused warming. This is caused by more heat on the planetary surface than exiting. Waste heat
    • Ok, so assuming that energy consumption increases 1% per year after the “exponential phase” begins, the planet Earth ITSELF would reach its limits from the standpoint of holding industry in less than a thousand years. The exponential phase for us seems to have started since the industrial revolution. Also, our current increase of energy consumption year over year is quite above 1%. Here’s the paper.
    • Hence, for environmental reasons, there would come a time in human history where we have to put our industry (which includes data centers) in space. Anywhere but Earth.

    Could we develop systems with crazy efficiency? Sure. Maybe. I don’t know. But even if we do, I can’t see a case where the Hedonic treadmill wouldn’t set in, still causing crazy energy consumption.

    Hence, in conclusion, boo to current space companies grifting space based data centers. But yay to eventually putting all industry off planet.

    • Munkisquisher@lemmy.nz
      3·
      8 days ago

      With the amount of heat and greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere with launch and eventual re-entry, will you ever get to net positive on that equation though?

    • Apytele@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      8 days ago

      I had been wondering lately if using the fossil fuels in space instead of on earth isn’t a viable option. It’s like a billion years of sunlight trapped inside the earth’s crust that’s all gotta go somewhere eventually anyway right? As long as it’s not fucking shit up in the atmosphere it could be a lot of use elsewhere maybe?

      • wraekscadu@vargar.org
        4·
        8 days ago

        Haha you’re forgetting the second part of the reaction: oxygen. You would need to somehow transport oxygen in addition to fossil fuels in space to burn em. You would need to expend a lot more energy in their transportation than what you would get from them.

        Hence, this idea has merit only to be used for propulsion (for now). Once we crack fusion (which I’m sure we will within this century), fossil fuels lose this application in space too.

    • Krusty@quokk.auEnglish
      11·
      8 days ago

      The radiators would not have to be that large.

      They just have to be sufficiently hot(T to the 4th power scaling). For the same unit area you would have of incoming solar flux you would have to move heat to a radiator of that exact same unit area to reach about 160° at a mere 70% emissivity. Heat pumps exist that can do that easily.

      • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
        1·
        8 days ago

        large radiators argument is extremely poor. Plan is a mesh of small datacenter modules. The inter nvl72 networking speed is irrelevant for inference/skynet. However, there is no hot semiconductor technology theory that competes with silicon for feature size/speed. There are much better designs than circulating fluid radiators, but all of them, add complexity and pump/nozzle failures. Supercritical compression (heat pump) systems is vastly more prone to failure, including in pipe/connection network. It also means thick, less deployable, radiators.