Comment by mrweasel
5 hours ago
Microsoft did do the experiment (Project Natick) where they had "datacenters" in pods under the sea with really good results. The idea was simply to ship enough extra capacity, but due to the environment, the failure rates where 1/8th of normal.
Still, dropping a pod into the sea makes more sense than launching it into space. At least cooling, power, connectivity and eventual maintenance is simpler.
The whole thing makes no sense and is seems like it's just Musk doing financial manipulation again.
https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/sustainability/pr...
> The whole thing makes no sense and is seems like it's just Musk doing financial manipulation again.
It's a fig leaf for getting two IPOs in one. There's no sense in analyzing it any further.
The experiment may have been successful, but if it was why don't we see underwater datacenters everywhere? It probably is a similar reason why we won't see space datacenters in the near future either.
Space has solar energy going for itself. With underwater you don't need to lug a 1420 ton rocket with a datacenter payload to space.
Salt water absolutely murders things, combined with constant movement almost anything will be torn apart in very little time. It's an extremely harsh environment compared to space, which is not anything. If you can get past the solar extremes without earths shield, it's almost perfect for computers. A vacuum, energy source available 24/7 at unlimited capacity, no dust, etc.
The vacuum is the problem. It might be cold but has terrible heat transfer properties. The area of radiators it would take to dissipate a data center dwarfs absolutely anything we’ve ever sent to orbit