Hacker News Reader

Comment by bob1029 | Hacker News Reader

Space-based compute is starting to look less crazy every day.

This is not just a wild-eyed thing invented by HN's favorite bad guy.

https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalabl...

Why would putting data center in space solve these problems? I feel like this is a total non sequitur. The solution is pay for more substations and power generation. This problem exists there regardless of space based compute and let me tell you the space based compute would 1000000x more expensive because you still need to build everything required in the current solution except in space! Its just not a real response to a lack of investment into infrastructure. And that means asking business to pay for the infrastrure they need as a collective industry.

I think they are thinking of something of a poorly designed Dyson Swarm, the plebs who came up with it think that with "cheap" launches, no permits really, and free* power, it might really come out in the wash and be easier to scale.

Is it a good idea? Most likely not, the amount of issues they are going to have is going to be amazing.

Ok, first solve cosmic rays, then solve space hardening silcon, then solve dumping megawatts of heat without convection.

oh and then solve data affinity whilst training.

oh and connectivity.

Oh and lossless RDMA over free space lasers.

Not that putting data centers in space is a good idea, but there are always problems to solve when doing anything novel or new right? Imagine the list when they were first discussing putting a guy on the moon and trying to get him back.

Yes, there are novel problems, and I love me a novel problem.

Much as I hate musk, I do love the engineers that managed to make practical high bandwidth inter satellite communications possible. the optics and sensing needed to do that is wonderful.

but data centres in space is just such a stupid fucking idea. Sure you need to solve those problems, but like add some fucking solar panels to datacentres on earth and solve the same problem locally. Its literally the same problem. but you have connection, cooling and less cosmic rays

Yeah but if you think about it from the perspective of a future AI, you'd want your data center in space so that meat plebs with drones on strings can't blow you up so easily.

The problem of waste heat alone is basically untenable by the laws of physics.

The ISS dissipates roughly 70kw of heat through 5000 square feet of radiator.

70kw is about 1-3 racks of ai compute.

The tech on the ISS is several decades old - modern versions of traditional radiators could dissipate about 1MW in a 3 metric ton package with a surface area of ~300m2. With advanced options like liquid droplet radiators, that weight could be cut in half.

https://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol2/thermalmana...

Maybe if HN's favorite bad guy said the quiet part out loud about exploring space compute to avoid regulation...instead of making bombastic claims about possible technical efficacy. I'm not really interested in giving credit to leaders that lie about their motives. Note the blog you linked doesn't mention this either.

Not quite, because "the quiet part" is that space-based datacenters, space exploration, Mars colonization, asteroid mining, and all the rest are just a smokescreen for the rapid and thorough militarization of Earth's orbit. It's a play for global domination through the ultimate air superiority.

Put them on container ships, and pretend you launched them into space. You'll come out ahead in every way.

there's still so many things to invent before this moves out of fiction... radiation, cooling, communication, costs ...

Not really, no. It still look absurd and a way to lobby local governments. Nothing has changed. It’s really just a way to say „let us do whatever we want, how we want, or we go to space“.

you do know that rad-hardened processors are 30 to 100 times slower than what we enjoy here on earth, right? And to use commercial hardware you need to have lots of redundancy. So at least 3x the GPUs. 3x the failure rate too (well more than 3x the rad-hardened devices, in total. Because they're more likely to fail, and you have 3x of them).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com