Comment by vonneumannstan
9 months ago
>But cooling is a huge problem. Space is cold, but there is no medium to transfer the heat away from the hot objects. I think this will be the biggest sticking point, unless they came up with an innovative solution.
Their main tech breakthrough would have to be in this area otherwise the company is worthless imo.
It's possible to do all of this with current technology. Just... Why? The cost would be exorbitant; even with really clever deployment tech, the launch costs are gonna be dominated by solar panels and radiators.
This is a super cool idea and seems like perfect investor-bait. That's about where it ends.
Genuinely most "AI" DCs are spending less than 9KW on cooling for every 100KW of servers. If you were that bothered about getting that to zero, you could literally sink them into the ocean, build a heat network so the town can take the heat for free or use any of a dozen more established and practical ways to do that.
Please don’t suggest heating the ocean! Someone might just go to try to do that. The ocean is already warming too much!
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Perhaps a hedge in case apocalyptic scenarios disable or reduce networks on the ground?
Apocalyptic scenarios where terrestrial communication methods going back over a century are no longer feasible, but we can still readily talk to space? And maintain/replace the stuff we have up there?
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Yes, because in an apocalyptic scenario what we all will be clamouring will be space data centres training AI and mining bitcoin.
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I don't think they can bend the laws of physics though. Vacuum means the only way to dissipate heat is through thermal radiation, hence the huge infrared radiators.