Comment by ggreer
19 hours ago
If you read the Starcloud whitepaper[1], it claims that massive batteries aren't needed because the satellites would be placed in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit. Except for occasional lunar eclipses, the solar panels would be in constant sunlight.
The whitepaper also says that they're targeting use cases that don't require low latency or high availability. In short: AI model training and other big offline tasks.
For maintenance, they plan to have a modular architecture that allows upgrading and/or replacing failed/obsolete servers. If launch costs are low enough to allow for launching a datacenter into space, they'll be low enough to allow for launching replacement modules.
All satellites launched from the US are required to have a decommissioning plan and a debris assessment report. In other words: the government must be satisfied that they won't create orbital debris or create a hazard on the ground. Since these satellites would be very large, they'll almost certainly need thrusters that allow them to avoid potential collisions and deorbit in a controlled manner.
Whether or not their business is viable depends on the future cost of launches and the future cost of batteries. If batteries get really cheap, it will be economically feasible to have an off-the-grid datacenter on the ground. There's not much point in launching a datacenter into space if you can power it on the ground 24/7 with solar + batteries. If cost to orbit per kg plummets and the price of batteries remains high, they'll have a chance. If not, they're sunk.
I think they'll most likely fail, but their business could be very lucrative if they succeed. I wouldn't invest, but I can see why some people would.
You can also drink from a shoe. It's absolutely possible.
And it enjoyed some popularity. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_boot
And there you've cut to the chase.
I was implying an unspoken obvious "but why would you?"
But of course the answer I missed was you don't, you make money from people who, for whatever reason, want to drink from shoes.
> For maintenance, they plan to have a modular architecture that allows upgrading and/or replacing failed/obsolete servers. If launch costs are low enough to allow for launching a datacenter into space, they'll be low enough to allow for launching replacement modules.
This is hiding so, so much complexity behind a simple hand wavy “modular”. I have trained large models on thousands of GPUs, hardware failure happen all the time. Last example in date: an infiniband interface flapping which ultimately had to be physically replaced. What do you do if your DC is in space? Do you just jettison the entire multi million $ DGX pod that contains the faulty 300$ interface before sending a new one? Do you have an army of astronauts + Dragons to do this manually? Do we hope we have achieve super intelligence by then and have robots that can do this for us ?
Waving the “Modular” magic key word doesn’t really cut it for me.
> Whether or not their business is viable depends on the future cost of launches and the future cost of batteries. If batteries get really cheap, it will be economically feasible to have an off-the-grid datacenter on the ground. There's not much point in launching a datacenter into space if you can power it on the ground 24/7 with solar + batteries.
Something tells me that the price of batteries is already cheap enough for terrestrial data centers to make more economic sense than launching a datacenter - which will also need batteries - into space.
Same with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, inventing a detour because it sounds cool and ultimately don't work out because Occam's Razor.
Let me alert all the NIMBY folks, let them know that data centers will be blocking their view of the moon and casting shadows on their backyards.
Just give all those astronomers mockup telescopes with little screens creating the fancy images they want inside them.
They will calm down.
Of course, they're soft targets in space war too, they could generate lots of debris.
Man I read “AI training in a high latency self sufficient satellite orbiting earth” as the start of a Sci-Fi novel…
Just another good proof of paper being an ideal medium for fiction
Any purported advantages have to contend with the fact that sending the modules costs millions of dollars. Tens to hundred millions