It’s really difficult to cool things in space, and it’s really difficult to power stationary things in space. It’s also really expensive to put things in space so size/weight is a problem.
So if it’s not cheaper/better for cooling, and it’s not cheaper/better for power, and it’s not cheaper/better for rack space… why is there a focus on shipping compute to space?
The point I keep coming back to is that it’s really hard for the public to protest/damage/destroy data centres in space.
It’s extremely difficult from a cooling perspective IIRC, way more than on earth. Like you have to vent into a near vacuum, which is one of the best insulators.
Even if they could pull it off, the data transmission speed would be sooooo bad relative to what it would take to ingest insane amount of data and then regurgitate it back.
I think its simpler than that, its just stock price pumping. They can tell the plebs that they have the tech to put servers in space, and the plebs will eat it up and pump the stock.
You can still destroy the terrestrial base stations.
What a stupid fucking idea
dogshit ass timeline where billionaire sociopaths keep doing the wrong things got me truly irritated since 2020
I wonder how they’re going to cool it?
Edit: Oh. So they’re just… not doing that. Okay. Hmm.
In the meantime, the company is taking baby steps. For now, the company is limited to just 15 minutes of operation in space before the chips have to be shut off to cool back down.
“It’s just a proof of concept guys, there are totally tons of good reasons to do this. We are definitely not just mashing sci-fi words together to scam investors.”
Brilliant. They should invest every penny into this. If they got this far without even referencing a 6th grade science book, they deserve to go under.
Nice! Oh, “Data Center”… Misread it as “CEO”.
Ignoring the hundred reasons this is dumb, I would just love to know the launch cost per expected compute.
Best quote from article is at the very end:
For now, the company is limited to just 15 minutes of operation in space before the chips have to be shut off to cool back down.
“fridge-sized data center” REALLY cracks me up. Like, how much processing power can you fit in there, considering all the space you need for cooling. And then I’m imagining some bloke on the ISS looking outside and just seeing a fridge float there hehe.
What I don’t like is thinking further about this. If this is how they want to roll out a bit of processing power in space, I can totally imagine them just yeeting like 5000 fridges into LEO, polluting it even more :(
Also, how’d it get so far? None of the engineers at Google screaming about how this is a really REALLY bad idea? Do they think that these datacenters are gonna be more acceptable by the public than the ones on Earth and accept the lower efficiency for better PR? I mean, that would make sense, if Google would care about looks, which I don’t think they do.
Home lab in space usable for 15 mins.
F.U.C.K. SCROOGLE! I hope they lose their asses on this!
We need an acronym, like “Fine” (freaked out, insecure, neurotic, emotional) from Italian Job.
F.U.C.K. = Fucking Useless Crooked Killjoy
