Does Elon Musk actually think the vacuum of space is a good cooling solution for an orbital datacenter?

[burnoutqueen@todon.nl]

@gwynnion or, at least, he acts like he did

[valthonis@dice.camp]

@gwynnion Everything that comes out his mouth is a ploy to get him more money or power. Usually both.

Orbital datacenters are just an attempt to grift the hyperscalers, desperate to grow and flush with money they can't let sit still or the economy shudders. "Give me a few of those billions, and we'll put your GPUs in space. It's cold there!"

The folks actually making decisions in tech rn would *absolutely* fall for this, over the protests of their own engineers.

[emilygb2023@chaosfem.tw]

@gwynnion

Hmm. He was the one who insisted that the cameras on his cars needed to be visual only, because he somehow thought restricting things to the visible light spectrum was better than LIDAR --- so yeah, that tracks.

I find it hilarious that most of the criticisms of the Miles Bron character in Glass Onion sort of disappeared over the last few years, as Elon demonstrated that Bron wasn't a caricature -- if anything, Elon is dumber than Miles.

[greenroc@mastodon.social]

@gwynnion I wish he would do something more useful, like cleaning up all the orbital space junk before more astonaughts get stranded in space.

[orangelantern@labyrinth.zone]

@gwynnion omg, right?! these people are *so* dumb, it’s amazing.

we really need to stop, collectively, equaling being a rich fuck with being a genius.

[chartier@toot.cafe]

@gwynnion Please tell me you’re joking

[timberwraith@mastodon.social]

@gwynnion Without atmosphere to serve as a means of heat removal, that leaves heat removal through infrared radiation or through some kind of evaporation?

The latter seems like a poor choice. So, radiation?

That doesn't sound as efficient as cooling in atmosphere.

[lazarou@mastodon.social]

@gwynnion he doesn't understand Space like he doesn't understand most things. I've always said this but people were like "oooo, he's going to Mars, aren't you excited?"

[timberwraith@mastodon.social]

@gwynnion And you'd have to keep it in the Earth's shadow? WTF?

[lazarou@mastodon.social]

@valthonis @gwynnion he said his rocket would be on Mars by 2025, it was not...nobody held him to it anyway.

A fraud.

[gwynnion@mastodon.social]

@chartier He also wants them to be solar powered!

[cwicseolfor@zeroes.ca]

@valthonis @gwynnion “Ploy” could be understood as giving him too much credit. He’s good at making up things they’ll fall for because he is also that stupid. He’s not the one building any of it or going to take the fall when it doesn’t work, that’s for the little people to clean up, he’s an Idea Man, and he’s Good At Ideas, just look at all money people give him! Not a critical thought to share between them, they’re all selling each other castles in the sky and trusting they can flip them for a profit.

[waitworry@sakurajima.moe]

@gwynnion look every sci fi show ever has taught us that outer space is like the coldest thing there is

[gwynnion@mastodon.social]

@timberwraith Radiative heat removal on something that hot and at that scale would require delicate mega-structures of their own as far as I know.

[gwynnion@mastodon.social]

@waitworry I know, it's annoying.

[bigtittybimbo@autonomous.zone]

@gwynnion "Sorry, our servers have experienced a rapid unexpected heat event, rendering them useless"

[timberwraith@mastodon.social]

@gwynnion That sounds rather unwieldy.

[gwynnion@mastodon.social]

@cwicseolfor @valthonis Musk excels at getting other stupid people to pay him to do things that will never happen. It's his entire business model.

[gwynnion@mastodon.social]

@timberwraith Kinda. Especially if he wants them to be purely solar powered.

[timberwraith@mastodon.social]

@gwynnion Oh, I can see him wanting to use some variation of nuclear fuel. A fun thing to have flying around overhead, you know.