I though that refrigerating things in space was using a lot of energy because heat cannot dissipate in the void of space.
Moreover, why are the energy cost 10x lower when in space you have unlimited access to sun power? Is it the cost of building the energy production infrastructure ?
Last time these folks were mentioned on HN, there was a lot of skepticism that this is really possible to do. The issue is cooling: in space, you can't rely on convection or conduction to do passive cooling, so you can only radiate away heat. However, the radiator would need to be several kilometers big to provide enough cooling, and obviously launching such a large object into space would therefore eat up any cost savings from the "free" solar power.
TFA> “In space, you get almost unlimited, low-cost renewable energy,”
Why is this exclusive to space? If you're powering datacenters on solar, one would think covering the Sahara or other large desert in datacenters would be easier than launching them into space. Renewable energy is just as plentiful and free there, you can connect it to the rest of the world with multiple TB/s of fiber links, and the construction/maintainence costs would be a few orders of magnitude less.
The Github paper seems to indicate they have considered the thermal aspects fairly heavily and mention that "conduction and convection to the environment are not
available in space".
So many questions, like how would you protect from bit flips, damage to circuits.
"10x lower energy costs and reduce the need for energy consumption on Earth." I am not sure if we need a rocket scientist to calculate the energy costs of manufacturing and sending a rocket to outer space versus putting that fuel into a generator and just letting it run.
What happens when the servers need to retire due to some unpatchable bug
So many questions to be asked, I don't know where to start. What's the upside of bunching up all the servers into a single megastructure rather than separate satellites?
We've officially lost the plot, we will now ship our AI data centers to ~space~ ... This will not work with modern technology.
The sun will be eclipsed by earth many times per day, requiring you to either shift all workloads or add substantial UPS weight. The radiator grid you need to cool 125kw is something like 16x the size of the entire data center.
I watched this video last week that went into 3 different scenarios, it's a good watch.
One of the selling points they mention is that they won't need to use any fresh water for cooling.
My understanding was that water-demands on Earth were an overblown issue and minuscule when compared to other uses of fresh water such as watering one acre of farmland.
Not to mention, "used" water is just "warm" water that can then be used again for other purposes.
So are they perpetuating a myth here? Or is water use a bigger issue than I thought?
Energy went into mining, extracting, refining, transporting all the raw materials needed to make these chips.
This is typical tech industry green washing as the industry fails to accept its destructive influence on the planet.
We need practical solutions that help reduce consumption and waste and actually address the issues. We don’t always need more we need to find a way to use less.
Apart from getting 16 sq. km of solar arrays and radiators into orbit - and without jumping to conclusions about whether this is a borderline scam - I can imagine 2 obvious showstoppers:
1) Space debris. This is proposal is several orders of magnitude larger than the biggest things in near-Earth orbits. Thus equally many orders more likely to be hit by, and create, space debris
2) Heat transport - this isn't my home turf, but I can't imagine building something lightweight enough to be launched, yet also capable of transferring enough heat away from the 5 GW core, without it melting/breaking
It's been a while since I read their whitepaper, but I don't recall either of those points being addressed.
It's going to be fun constantly repairing all those solar arrays. We'll be destroying our planet with the rocket launches alone. But hey! The more ridiculous the idea, the greater the chance that Trump and his conspiracy-laden circle will embrace it. It works in science fiction movies and novels, why not in reality, duh. /s
I have had people point out that building a Dyson sphere is pretty much a dumb idea, and there's no concievable reason why we would build one even if we could.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 70.0 ms ] threadMoreover, why are the energy cost 10x lower when in space you have unlimited access to sun power? Is it the cost of building the energy production infrastructure ?
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43977188
Why is this exclusive to space? If you're powering datacenters on solar, one would think covering the Sahara or other large desert in datacenters would be easier than launching them into space. Renewable energy is just as plentiful and free there, you can connect it to the rest of the world with multiple TB/s of fiber links, and the construction/maintainence costs would be a few orders of magnitude less.
These plans are so much larger than anything built so far that they're scifi.
The first thing to consider is that this thing won’t be stationary!
Geosynchronous orbit is much more expensive to reach per kg launched, even for Starship… when it starts working properly.
Lower orbits… aren’t stationary. Who wants a data centre that’s “over the horizon” from the owning country most of the time!?
If you think AWS egress costs are bad? Just add some zeroes! No, more zeroes than that…
That is...very, very large.
The sun will be eclipsed by earth many times per day, requiring you to either shift all workloads or add substantial UPS weight. The radiator grid you need to cool 125kw is something like 16x the size of the entire data center.
I watched this video last week that went into 3 different scenarios, it's a good watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAcR7kqOb3o
My understanding was that water-demands on Earth were an overblown issue and minuscule when compared to other uses of fresh water such as watering one acre of farmland.
Not to mention, "used" water is just "warm" water that can then be used again for other purposes.
So are they perpetuating a myth here? Or is water use a bigger issue than I thought?
Energy went into mining, extracting, refining, transporting all the raw materials needed to make these chips.
This is typical tech industry green washing as the industry fails to accept its destructive influence on the planet.
We need practical solutions that help reduce consumption and waste and actually address the issues. We don’t always need more we need to find a way to use less.
Can I bet on the contrary odds? Could throw down my whole retirement with confidence
The famously heat conductive vacuum...
Someone fedex a vacuum flask full of hot coffee to nvidia HQ with an explanatory note.
1) Space debris. This is proposal is several orders of magnitude larger than the biggest things in near-Earth orbits. Thus equally many orders more likely to be hit by, and create, space debris
2) Heat transport - this isn't my home turf, but I can't imagine building something lightweight enough to be launched, yet also capable of transferring enough heat away from the 5 GW core, without it melting/breaking
It's been a while since I read their whitepaper, but I don't recall either of those points being addressed.
Now we have one - venture capital.