Whatever happened to resource efficiency, being able to do more for less energy? This whole thing is super unsustainable.
Technology
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
Just tell Elmo to add bigger CPU and GPU fans. That'll work.
Well its a great ideal if you happen to be a company with a space program, sounds like a very lucrative venture.
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
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
The thing that people miss in this is that the feature they're seeking by putting servers in space is only to have servers outside of any jurisdiction, with the advantages that it might bring
This is 1 million% what's at play here. Tech bros HATE that they have to deal with stupid laws, and putting a server outside of the jurisdiction of literally every country is a dream. A giant server ship has to dock, it needs fuel....not so with something in orbit (in Elon fantasy land anyway)
Imagine spending 10 years to build a server in space to avoid some law and next month government changes the law
Whatever company owns it will be responsible for it. That company will answer to whoever it needs to here on earth.
you think us sub-millionaires have any power in government, huh?
Now that is actually smart
Ridiculous, you can't have cloud computing in space, there's no atmosphere!
Considering the ludicrous price to put each pound of equipment into orbit, I'd like to invite them to send as much hardware as they can in to (high) geostationary orbit so they can find out how well a vacuum does NOT promote radiating heat
Edit: also forgot about solar radiation flipping bits. I love the idea of them having to reboot the machine (if they even can) remotely once ever 15 minutes
Wouldn't it be cheaper to put it underground?
Also couldn't power it with the sun. Which is infinite and free power
still have to deal with space debris, and the radiation damaging/wearing down the equipement overtime.
In either case the installation cost and infrastructure costs are excessive and the I/o is probably limited
I don't think the point is to really build datacenters in space. The point is to convince investors that it can be done in a profitable manner so some people can create a fake businesses out of it and siphon money off the system. Much like the same as trying to convince investors that LLM + more money = AGI
I also wonder if this is an entire red herring. There are increasing reasons for more compute in space, such as to pre-filter sensor data.
Is it to naive/optimistic to think no one is actually looking for a space datacenter to compute terrestrial loads, but they recognize the need for processing space loads?
It's a legal thing. No (real) jurisdiction. In space nobody will shut down Grok generating kiddo porn. It's basically the precursor for Epstein Island 2.0.
Don’t data-centers require massive cooling?
Yes, and it's easier to cool things on earth. In space, there's no air to help you cool thinks off, you can only reject heat through radiation. Most spacecraft are carefully designed to reflect heat/light on surfaces facing the sun and radiate heat into empty space from surfaces that are shaded.
Mr Musk has to justify that 1.75t valuation somehow
I love how his rationale is that manufacturers of natural gas generator parts are backordered o 2030, so instead of... I don't know, spinning up more natural gas hardware or terrestial power generation, the easiest solution is to go from 11 attempts/0 successful launches of a space platform to tens of thousands of launches a year carrying unprecedented mass of bullshit into orbit...