Editor’s note: … In this article, we discuss the technical challenges of building an orbital data center constellation: launching all of it, dissipating heat in space, dealing with radiation, and addressing latency issues in orbit. Read part one here.
I find the napkin math interesting, especially putting into light that given expected longevity of such satellites, 5 to 7 years, they will have to do 10 to 42 launches per day. SpaceX will need $1.5 to $10 trillions to make it happen. All of that so the slop machine doesn’t have to run into obstacles like democracy ? So it can destroy communities and the environment freely? What are we doing?
Just here to comment that I only pasted the title of the article as the title of the post. I find the content of the article interesting. I’m not actually asking that question, though answer it if you please.
Solar panels and infrared heat disposal into space can both work just fine right here on the ground.
I always wondered how we planned for dissipating heat in space to be comparable to dissipating heat on earth. Feels like whatever they’re using to handle that heat is going to have to be huge and heavy.
Has to be great for avoiding any legal obligations on how you might handle the data though. Can do whatever you want as long as it stays in space.
The article goes somewhat in depth about it. Basically, heat dissipation in space is a solved physics problem. It is now in the engineering domain to try to make it more lightweight, efficient, scalable and ultimately cheap. Ars Technica does reference a great video by Scott Manley where he just does the math to figure out how large the heat sink panels need to be. His back of the envelope math leads him to believe that a starlink sized solar panel or something in that order of magnitude will be enough.
Really fucking hard. Because they demand high power, and any repairs are insanely expensive.
Fucking idiots.
There will be no repairs in space. Everything they launch is set and done and comes crashing back in the atmosphere 5 years later. They fully expect radiation and debris to render the space data center satellites unusable after 5 to 7 years (in the article). We all know that after 5 years those chips will be obsolete anyways.
This is a huge issue, the amount of mass being sent into orbit that is planned to just burn up in the atmosphere 5 years later.
There’s a difference between telecom satellites and other space stuff. Hubble launched in 1990 and it’s not only still in space, it’s still working.
Oh yeah ofc. The Hubble upgrades and repairs are a good example to show how good planning, good technology and will can ensure long standing missions delivering incredible science.
The planning for these mega constellation is different for sure and the goal is money, not science, which is sad. That’s why they will burn in the atmosphere no matter what.
Ooh, I’ve seen this one. The secret is just to build them out of paperclips.
I work in this industry and its hard enough to get a GEO/LEO bird in the air let alone a data center…
“we?”
we are not billionaires. wtf are they doing?
We live in the same word as billionaires. They exist, they don’t exist in a vacuum though maybe, briefly, they should.
This is a false front for laundering VC money. It’s not logistically feasible, and like AI, they will have made off with billions before they ever attempt to launch anything.
Typical “numba go up” scheme.
Though I am confident they are going to try really hard to make it work. They just want to time it so that VC doesn’t hold the short end of the stick when the music stops (lol I love mixing analogies like that). I am worried of the impact of launching so many vehicles into space. They will launch a lot of vehicles, there is no denying that, even if it doesn’t get to 1M satellite constellation. All the shit they send to LEO will have to fall back down eventually. It will burn up in the atmosphere. That’s a lot of extra stuff in the atmosphere. That’s also a lot of stuff up there that will interfere with astronomy. A lot of stuff that can lead to Kessler syndrome.
What are we doing?
We are allowing Psychopaths to get to the top in the perpetual Capitalist economic war - everybody against everybody else, no rules. Rich Psychopaths are now running Western societies as a private Fascist club, and they use their power to manage information/policies, so they are; not in any danger from ‘socialism/communism’ etc, able to create consent to attack their ‘Evil’ enemies (that just don’t want Epstein psychos to control their nations future or resources), keep alternatives down, and just be able to keep hoarding power/wealth from the backs of ordinary people all around the world…
That is what Psychopaths do, they create chaos and exploit the situation for their own benefit - most often harming everyone else. Capitalism is inherently a psychopath ideology where exploitation and absolute selfishness is both the goal and highest morality. No wonder the ideology is promoted by the most powerful psychopaths that benefit from that belief. We could easily add the 2 ‘missing’ prongs and just call ‘Capitalism’ a full Dark Triad belief-system (Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and Narcissism). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad
The rich removed - The Dark Triad Epstein Class - won bc they control the narrative and can manufacture consent for what they want.
So to YOU, that still believe in the Capitalist ‘free market’ dystopia/fantasy: Stop believing in/supporting their Dark Triad Capitalist belief-system and things will calm down by it self…
Its easy: IF the rich removed recommend it, you DON’T !
rich removed recommend
How sad that ‘C u n t’ automatically gets ‘removed’ - suicide simplistic censorship - lame…
You can’t say cunt on your instance?
Everyone else can.
That’s a .ml problem, most instances don’t have anything blocking cunt or any other words.
Hard enough that it’s not worth it. Unless you’re on the board of SpaceX about to make an IPO. Above the cloud: Building data centres in space
His AI is already loosing money, and this looks to be massively expensive. Might a tired soul hope that this will put a serious dent in his hoardings?
I’d imagine not very hard, but then would it even be worth it? I’m imagining something like in Cyberpunk: an orbital digital prison where one company keeps its enemies’ minds on chips that can be swapped to an entirely different person and overwrite their original personality.
