"It really seems like anyone with some renders and a white paper written by someone being gassed up by an overly agreeable AI can get VC funding these days."
  • hunnybubny@discuss.tchncs.de
    English
    27 minutes

    SpaceX IPO happened to keep xAi afloat.

    Servers in space topic exist because of this very reason.

    It is a non subject

  • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1 hour

    You could put em on the moon with a heatpump into the ground.

    The cost per pound to get them there is insane.

    They are seriously old in 2 years.

    They could put them in deserts here with closed loop cooling.

    or… hear me out… Maybe we DON’T NEED THAT MUCH AI…

  • kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    3 hours

    It’s literally just taking the piss out of idiotic investors. Data Centers, AI, space, new frontier, new markets. It checks all the boxes to get idiots excited to dump money into your tech company so people keep talking about it because talking about it is what gets results. Hopefully nobody is dumb enough to actually try it, it’s an absolute scam.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 hours

      I mean, space construction companies are happy to try it.

      If Bezos keeps giving them money, who are they to say no? It may not even all be a waste in the long run, as it could be a “testing ground” for future scientific missions.

    • hansolo@lemmy.todayEnglish
      1 hour

      I see it as a win-win.

      Either Elom and his fellow dipshits waste a ton of cash chasing literal pie in the sky,

      Or

      A viable commercial presence in space is validated and terrestrial power needs eased.

      /S

      Can you all not even tell this or sarcasm?

      • kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2 hours

        Nah, you’re not jaded enough yet, it’ll be used to facilitate a wealth transfer. Huge wealth management firms will tie up venture capital in financing SpaceX and BO and smaller space construction firms in a boondoggle and when it fails to materialize a profit they will pocket the proceeds and the losses will be covered by taxes and retirement accounts.

        They do this again and again. It’s the kleptocracy playbook, they’re just getting bigger and bolder and more in your face with it.

  • xthexder@l.sw0.comEnglish
    3 hours

    The advantage of datacenters in space is that the peasants can’t break in and sabotage your equipment. Only a very small set of nations would have the capability of blowing it up or somehow jamming its communications.

    It literally only makes sense if you’re a billionaire worried about the growing unpopularity of your AI datacenters, or you’re using it for war and don’t want it easily bombed…

    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 hours

      The advantage of datacenters in space is that the peasants can’t break in and sabotage your equipment.

      If that’s your criteria, put servers in containers and sink them in the ocean. Bonus, no cooling problems.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 hours

      But why not some remote desert?

      Or the open ocean, floating on the water? That’s literally outside any jurisdiction, and mostly outside the peasants’ reach.

      • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2 hours

        I just saw some in China using ocean water for cooling. I think they were underwater?

        I seem to recall like 10 or 15 years ago, someone from Google was trying to put a datacenter on a large ship, like a cargo ship or something. Then the story disappeared.

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2 hours

          Yeah they did. Microsoft has tried underwater datacenters too.

          And theres tons of alternative cooling techniques. The only reason evaporators are being used is because they are the absolute quickest and cheapest to set up, en masse. They don’t care about efficiency, leadership is just feeling FOMO and wants the datacenters up yesterday.

  • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    3 hours

    I’ve been working on IT for quite a while now and the only certain thing on this business is that hardware breaks down. All of it. Only questions are ‘when’ and ‘how’. I’m pretty sure you can’t get NBD support to the orbit. And I’d guess that shaking the shit out of the hardware during launch won’t really help.

    And that’s of course just a minor detail, the whole idea is so stupid on a very fundamental level that I don’t know why it’s even a news worthy.

  • Jaysyn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2 hours

    A data center in space would be damn near impossible to cool.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 hours

      What’s sad is that Stanley did a remarkable job of putting a vacuum flask in the literal hands of millions of Americans. It shouldn’t be hard at all for everyone to figure out why this is the case, but here we are.

  • HugeNerd@lemmy.caEnglish
    2 hours

    Anyone who thinks it will ever happen is equally silly. Space is a dead end, but because of decades of sci-fi people think Star Trek is real.

  • Cypress@lemmy.zipEnglish
    5 hours

    Space being “cold” doesn’t matter since vacuum INSULATES.

    it’s not even cold…! The matter that DOES exist in it is very hot plasma but it’s just really thinly spread out.

    • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.netEnglish
      3 hours

      This is what I’ve been tearing my hair out over any time this comes up. If you put a computer in space it will heat up until it achieves incandescence. Which is bad for the performance.

  • rmuk@feddit.ukEnglish
    3 hours

    Even putting aside the absurd expense, impossible power demand, lack of cooling and abundance of hostile radiation, what the fuck is even the point of a data centre in orbit? “Sorry, I can’t access my files right now, the data centre is over the Indian Ocean”. “Yeah, I’ve sent the email - it’ll be delivered in fourty-three hours when the satellite is next in range of London”. Yes, I’m being facetious but what possible benefit could there be for having ten thousand tiny, low-power data centres - of which you can only access one or two at a time - versus the obvious, existing, cheaper, proven alternative?

    • WanderingThoughts@europe.pubEnglish
      2 hours

      It’s SpaceX. Of course they’ll say all communication goes through Starlink.

      But so far the only use for data centers in space is to already run processing on satellite data and space based telescopes to just send the results back to Earth instead of raw data. And in future perhaps robotics in space that need processing help.

    • xthexder@l.sw0.comEnglish
      3 hours

      As far as I know, there are no more orbital deadzones. We’ve got so many satellites, if not Starlink, I’m sure some other satellites could do the job of relaying to ground stations. We get live video of boosters landing in the middle of the ocean after all.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 hours

      In the investor presentations, its mostly:

      • Increased solar flux.

      • Outside any jurisdiction.

      That’s technically true.

      And I assume they’d either be in geosync orbit, networked to each other in LEO like Starlink, or maybe just “training nodes” that don’t need constant ground comms.

      …Of course, what they leave out is the infeasibility.

    • BlackVenom@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 hours

      I didn’t read the article, I’m not AI, but isn’t this the point? It’s a ridiculous idea and to believe it…

  • jaykrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5 hours

    Yea honestly, orbital data centers are the dumbest shit I’ve heard during this bubble, and a huge indication of peak bubble hype.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 hours

      Those only solve for gravity, or not having to pay for fuel to keep things in orbit. Other heavenly bodies are further away, so latency becomes a big problem, followed by exponentially more power to transmit (radio) in order to maintain the same bandwidth. That and cooling: the possible candidates range from as bad as orbit to worse and much worse, all with increasing latency and power needs to boot.

      Overall, even the in-orbit version is a bad idea.

  • FE80@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2 hours

    VCs are so dumb and insane they deserve whatever happens to them. Data centers in space…sure…go for it…prove the naysayers wrong.

  • HumbleExaggeration@feddit.orgEnglish
    5 hours

    If you sell rockets and satellites, then data centers in space sound like a perfect idea to increase demand with other people’s money.