i'll believe in orbital data centers as soon as i see one in orbit, until then it is just bullshit

[megmac@social.treehouse.systems]

@ariadne @ireneista I think the idea is to put a lot of smaller units of compute into a huge starlink-style cluster that communicate with each other as well as the ground.

But of course now you're adding extra launch costs, distributed computing *in space*, and many other new problems on top of the cooling one.

[ariadne@social.treehouse.systems]

@megmac @ireneista even if it is not as a single unit, it has to be launched into space

[ireneista@adhd.irenes.space]

@ariadne @megmac you're right, yeah, the tyranny of the rocket equation and all that. there are many serious obstacles and that's one of them; we personally focus on heat dissipation because the answer to "that will cost so much it will bankrupt the world" is "that's okay, this is our destiny! do it anyway!" whereas the answer to "we don't know how" is, at least, some form of "oh okay we'll have to invent something new then"

[ireneista@adhd.irenes.space]

@ariadne @megmac there's this very grim calculus that informs which objection we choose to focus on when trying to make an argument that we want to be taken seriously by people ideologically distant from ourselves

[tknarr@mstdn.social]

@ariadne Let 'em try to put the proposed Stratos data center in Utah into orbit. If they manage it, we'll have no problem with Moonbase Alpha (without the nuclear waste dumps).

[cerement@social.targaryen.house]

@ariadne

farmers across the midwest: It’s raining RAM chips!

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@ariadne Doesn't matter if you could even. It'll throttle to 10 Mhz because it's impossible to shed any heat.

[filmfreak75@mastodon.social]

@ariadne rule
of thumb: if Elon says it, 99.9% chance it’s bullshit he made up that will never happen…

…YouTube is filled with videos with the receipts

@nullagent

[ska@social.treehouse.systems]

@dalias @ariadne Yeah, of all the things you could want to have in space, datacenters are like the last on my list.

The only explanation why the idea even exists is that it came directly out of a coked out techbro and was considered genius by a bunch of other coked out techbros.

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@ska @ariadne When coked out tech bros say it, their investor fanboys listen and the money flows. The fact that the thing can never work just makes it all the more lucrative for scamming investors, since you never have to deliver; you can just keep escalating the promises to something new and keep passing the worthless paper on to new rounds of marks.

[ska@social.treehouse.systems]

@dalias @ariadne My only hope is that the "finding out" phase happens while I'm still alive and able to watch. And ideally still able to help with the rebuild.

[ariadne@social.treehouse.systems]

@dalias @ska datacenters in space literally sounds like something I would come up with if I smoked way too much weed

[lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me]

@ariadne @dalias @ska space-datacenter but space- means the same as space-cake.
Or effectively a weed farm/bar.

[leadegroot@bne.social]

@ariadne weeeelll… if it gets us an asteroid mining industry, maybe it’s worth it?

[alwayscurious@infosec.exchange]

@ariadne Can it be done? Yes. Is it a good idea? Absolutely not.

The cooling and power problems are absolutely solveable with enough work. The financial problems are not solveable in the forseeable future.

[alwayscurious@infosec.exchange]

@ska @dalias @ariadne The real waste is a ton of money being wasted that could have been spent on more useful things. Like solving world hunger.

[cgnarne@hj.9fs.net]

@ariadne@treehouse.systems @dalias@hachyderm.io @ska@treehouse.systems challenge accepted