"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."
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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…