Just tell Elmo to add bigger CPU and GPU fans. That’ll work.
Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.
Submitted 2 weeks ago by lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea/
Comments
Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
It’s as stupid as solar roadways, a solution nobody asked for and we also already have way better solutions.
I mean why.
Doomsider@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Solar roadways are the future! Driving on solar panels is the only way forward. Until all our roads are solar we will never be free people.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
cause of ping?
ianonavy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There’s nowhere to dump heat! Modern data centers rely on heat exchange systems that move excess waste energy into the air or earth. The servers will be thermally throttled to a crawl.
prenatal_confusion@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
No, that works well with Starlink for example. But only because it’s in low earth orbit. In geostationary orbit You do in fact have a horrible ping.
Not being familiar with the details of this Elon brain fart I would hope they didn’t aim for geostationary… Because why?? Then again who knows with that idiot.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
alr ty
jj4211@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If it’s close enough for respectable latency, it’s close enough to experience drag. Given the maddeningly high power/cooling and resultant large surface area, then that satellite will have a tendency to incur re-entry.
So either close enough for “ok” latency but will burn up relatively soon or high enough to keep an orbit longer but terrible latency.
HubertManne@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I was under the impressions cpu’s were very sensitive to radiation. If we could mine and manufacture in space I could see this maybe.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s not speculation. Nvidia themselves have run experiments with GPUs in orbit, and the issue gets worse with smaller lithography (eg newer chips).
MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Spacecraft software engineer here:
They are and they aren’t. Radiation causes problems in terms of Single Event Upsets where a 0 turns to 1 and a 1 turns to 0 for a super tiny second. CPUs take some amount of time to let the transistor circuit stabilize before moving onto the next instruction so if an SEU happens in the beginning of this period it won’t have any downstream effects. Like a bump on the road.
Memory however is vulnerable to this tiny amount of time and can flip a bit to a different state than it’s supposed to be, but both are solvable problems with hardware and software based solutions, with ECC being the most common.
The other major problem is Total Ionizing Dose. Put silicon based semiconductors in radiation long enough and they will break down, and there’s no real hardware or software based solution to that. But it takes a long time
HubertManne@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
That is what I remember but it sounded like its a problem like that on earth with the massive atmosphere shielding and is exponentially worse in space.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They already run AMD chips on starlink, so they’ve figured out someway to shield them in most cases. Some solar flares at bad times (something about while raising orbits) has nuked some dishes before.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They’re shielded by being in a very low orbit. I don’t think that would work for a data center.
HubertManne@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Im pretty sure they are shielded as I think I have seen stuff like that for the electronics in the iss. Thing is that the eletronics in sattelites and the space station are pretty small relative to datacenters. The only benefit I can really see is maybe they can be solar powered which I guess if the panel acts as shielding and stays sun facing but all the extra expense of getting it up there. I just don’t see it as practical. I mean technically it should either work or not basedo on cost as long as they don’t wring out any subudies or soemthing.
itsblorpintime@lemmy.org 2 weeks ago
Whatever happened to resource efficiency, being able to do more for less energy? This whole thing is super unsustainable.
Ranulph@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
Making reusable rockets is impossible and stupid. Electric cars are stupid and wont work. Satellite internet is too expensive and stupid. So far Elmo is batting 3 for 3 and I am going to bet he can make it work. Unlike the CyberTruck
lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
More nuanced (and without using the word “stupid”)
- Making reusable rockets is very difficult. It was high risk, high reward.
- Electric cars were always the climate change solution IF the battery gets good enough. And it got good enough. I hate my country’s car industry (I’m from Germany) for not getting their asses up.
- Satellite internet is in fact too expensive for average customers. I think, no on has ever declared it as bad for people in regions without existing internet intrastructure. The question is how profitable it is, but it’s not publicly traded, so we will probably not get the numbers.
For sure, Elmo can somehow make profit out of it, e.g. by selling the space cloud usage as “can’t be controlled by an government on earth” for a high price. But when we concentrate on the facts: It can’t be more efficient than Azure or AWS on earth, at least not for the next decades.
Ranulph@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
The Russians spat at his feet when he asked to buy their rocket engines, lots of naysayers. I have and love my starlink.
mad_djinn@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
none of these things “have worked” they just represent a privately subsidized shift in infrastructure and society. there is no such thing as progress, you progressive
gleaming eyes wide open
Ranulph@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
I am biased because I have starklink and love it. It works…but before Elon worked on his vision for re usable rockets it was a dream. He changed the world.
workgood@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
they are a great idea actually
ATS1312@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
For 10 bitcoin I have a
bridgeai datacenter in space I can sell youspicehoarder@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I’ve already made 100x on my space AI satellite
poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
This is all part of the secret plot of a sentient AI that has taken over the US and wants to leave the planet asap /s
Doomsider@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
By the time you launched and assembled one in orbit their hardware would already be outdated. Sounds like a great plan!