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Comment by zamalek

9 months ago

What does space give us that Earth does not in this scenario? Free real estate? They only mention falling costs for deployment.

29 comments

zamalek

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dilyevsky  9 months ago

There's an answer in their whitepaper[0] - see Table 1. tl;dr - power is continuous and free via solar array

[0] - https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf

  • toomuchtodo  9 months ago

    > power is continuous and free via solar array

    It’s is on earth as well using solar and batteries. What is likely to get cheaper faster? Solar and batteries? Or lifting datacenters to space? The world is almost at the point of deploying 1TW/year of solar, and batteries are catching up. No space required. There aren't a lot of VC investment opportunities speeding the rate of solar and battery deployments though.

    • dilyevsky  9 months ago

      The argument probably is that battery advances require not yet existing tech via new chemistry etc while what they are proposing is basically just integrating tech that already exists

      1 reply →

  • CobrastanJorji  9 months ago

    Just spitballing here, but what if you built it on Earth, and then used the savings to build a second one on the opposite side of Earth? Now you have equivalently continuous power via solar array and also, as a bonus, air.

  • zamalek  9 months ago

    Power in needs to equal heat out, and that isn't easy in space. They, deceptively, claim that their novel solution is radiative cooling. Relying on radiation for cooling in space is the problem statement! Convective (as on Earth) is significantly more effective.

    I'm not one of those idiots who would claim that "we should focus on terrestrial problems instead of space," but this idea seems to have only downsides.

  • cj  9 months ago

    > “We still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this technology… there’s no way to get there without a breakthrough… we need fusion or we need radically cheaper solar plus storage or something” -Sam Altman

    It's kind of depressing that the only way to make this tech better is to feed it more energy. (And apparently now to send it to space)

    • jebarker  9 months ago

      It's also interesting that everyone is convinced the same capabilities can't be realized with drastically less compute.

tux3  9 months ago

[flagged]

  • dang  9 months ago

    Can you please not post comments like this? Thoughtful criticism is welcome, of course, but this sort of thing isn't. Besides breaking the site guidelines, it takes threads in less interesting directions and evokes even worse comments from others. We're trying to avoid that here.

    "Don't be snarky."

    "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

    "Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative."

    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

    • tux3  9 months ago

      Really, on second look, snark still feels justified here. The issue is with TFA. There is little room for a thoughtful comment in response to something transparent.

      Some type of submissions will invariably not result in very deep discussion, when the topic itself is so shallow.

      1 reply →

    • toraway  9 months ago

      Tbh your moderation is normally very restrained and even handed so was a bit surprising to see you take down several borderline overly snarky comments in a row (that just so happen to be directed against VC investors or YC founders).

      3 replies →

  • xnx  9 months ago

    I do wonder about data centers in the arctic. Cut out the middle step of greenhouse gases and melt the polar caps directly.