And just like that Elon Musk shifted the overton window away from "unthinkable" on yet another topic.
GMoromisato
If data centers in space end up being economically viable, then I don't see how anyone can catch SpaceX. They are ten years ahead in both launch capability and satellite manufacturing.
zactato
How are they solving the heat dissipation issues?
lastscattering
The part I find wilder than cooling is the formation flying. If I remember their paper right, it's 81 satellites inside a 1 km radius, neighbours 100 to 200 m apart, because the optical links only get datacenter bandwidth over short distances. The ISS is about 110 m across, so that's satellites roughly an ISS-length apart, all doing 7.5 km/s
ForHackernews
lowkey insane that it will end up cheaper to shoot your datacenter into space than get it past the county board permitting process.
helsinkiandrew
> Announced last year, Project Suncatcher is a long-term, research moonshot exploring whether space could one day host scalable machine learning infrastructure It’s very confusing to have a project related to space called a moonshot project.
ilamont
I didn't have time to watch the videos, but in the text I didn't see anything that addresses data center operations requiring manual intervention. Swapping out obsolete or failing TPUs. Rewiring or replacing connections. "Listening" for sounds indicating an equipment failure. What are the proposals to address these needs?
neuronexmachina
Whenever I hear about this I can't help but be reminded of the Howard Hughes Glomar Explorer, where a hugely-expensive commercial project was actually part of a secret CIA initiative to recover a Soviet submarine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer I'm not sure that's truly the case here, but it does seem like the tech Project Suncatcher is working on has at least some overlap with requirements for military SIGINT and in-orbit imagery processing.
nova22033
Alphabet holds approximately 551 million shares of SpaceX (trading under the ticker SPCX), valued at roughly $94.1 billion, which represents about a 4% to 6% stake in the company.
sanj
Does anyone understand the math behind this bit? > In the right orbit, a solar panel can be up to 8 times more productive than on earth....
alexnewman
People want to put ai in space to hook them to sensors and predict . Checkout project Merlin
ChrisArchitect
Suncatcher ? Not to be confused with Reflect Orbital's FCC-approved giant space mirror https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48871367
porridgeraisin
How is no one in the whole thread aware that the intention behind orbital datacenters is military? You want to process outputs of large space based sensors in space itself, and reduce latency (e.g to other space based assets) or increase goodput (to ground). Either it's that weird "space is easier than getting land on earth"(it's not) or the same tortured arguments about heat dissipation, no one is going to run consumer scale compute with consumer scale economics in space ffs. And maintenance and cost does not matter when it comes to strategic military assets, they are a step function useful enough to warrant even a few monthly replacement. Everyone else with strategic weapons and a space program e.g india china is launching one as well.
seydor
Aside from practical issues, why make your datacenters so vulnerable?
kin
For those questioning viability, there's a startup called Starcloud https://www.starcloud.com/ with a public whitepaper explaining a bit their hardware and economics https://www.starcloud.com/wp . They've already had one small proof of concept launched. Not trying to promote, I just heard about them on the ycomb podcast
drop_star
Google has a bridge to sell you
old-gregg
I just searched for "Elysium" in comments. No hits. Perhaps it's too soon.
bar8uyr
Wait until they work out that earth is in space
sghiassy
Why isn’t building data centers in Greenland being talked about? - Unlimited geothermal energy. - Cold climate for heat dissipation - tons of land
next_xibalba
I have been saying for years that the great gap for ML is that it isn't in space. Glad Google finally caught up with me.
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Discussion Highlights (20 comments)
10xDev
And just like that Elon Musk shifted the overton window away from "unthinkable" on yet another topic.
GMoromisato
If data centers in space end up being economically viable, then I don't see how anyone can catch SpaceX. They are ten years ahead in both launch capability and satellite manufacturing.
zactato
How are they solving the heat dissipation issues?
lastscattering
The part I find wilder than cooling is the formation flying. If I remember their paper right, it's 81 satellites inside a 1 km radius, neighbours 100 to 200 m apart, because the optical links only get datacenter bandwidth over short distances. The ISS is about 110 m across, so that's satellites roughly an ISS-length apart, all doing 7.5 km/s
ForHackernews
lowkey insane that it will end up cheaper to shoot your datacenter into space than get it past the county board permitting process.
helsinkiandrew
> Announced last year, Project Suncatcher is a long-term, research moonshot exploring whether space could one day host scalable machine learning infrastructure It’s very confusing to have a project related to space called a moonshot project.
ilamont
I didn't have time to watch the videos, but in the text I didn't see anything that addresses data center operations requiring manual intervention. Swapping out obsolete or failing TPUs. Rewiring or replacing connections. "Listening" for sounds indicating an equipment failure. What are the proposals to address these needs?
neuronexmachina
Whenever I hear about this I can't help but be reminded of the Howard Hughes Glomar Explorer, where a hugely-expensive commercial project was actually part of a secret CIA initiative to recover a Soviet submarine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer I'm not sure that's truly the case here, but it does seem like the tech Project Suncatcher is working on has at least some overlap with requirements for military SIGINT and in-orbit imagery processing.
nova22033
Alphabet holds approximately 551 million shares of SpaceX (trading under the ticker SPCX), valued at roughly $94.1 billion, which represents about a 4% to 6% stake in the company.
sanj
Does anyone understand the math behind this bit? > In the right orbit, a solar panel can be up to 8 times more productive than on earth....
alexnewman
People want to put ai in space to hook them to sensors and predict . Checkout project Merlin
ChrisArchitect
Suncatcher ? Not to be confused with Reflect Orbital's FCC-approved giant space mirror https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48871367
porridgeraisin
How is no one in the whole thread aware that the intention behind orbital datacenters is military? You want to process outputs of large space based sensors in space itself, and reduce latency (e.g to other space based assets) or increase goodput (to ground). Either it's that weird "space is easier than getting land on earth"(it's not) or the same tortured arguments about heat dissipation, no one is going to run consumer scale compute with consumer scale economics in space ffs. And maintenance and cost does not matter when it comes to strategic military assets, they are a step function useful enough to warrant even a few monthly replacement. Everyone else with strategic weapons and a space program e.g india china is launching one as well.
seydor
Aside from practical issues, why make your datacenters so vulnerable?
kin
For those questioning viability, there's a startup called Starcloud https://www.starcloud.com/ with a public whitepaper explaining a bit their hardware and economics https://www.starcloud.com/wp . They've already had one small proof of concept launched. Not trying to promote, I just heard about them on the ycomb podcast
drop_star
Google has a bridge to sell you
old-gregg
I just searched for "Elysium" in comments. No hits. Perhaps it's too soon.
bar8uyr
Wait until they work out that earth is in space
sghiassy
Why isn’t building data centers in Greenland being talked about? - Unlimited geothermal energy. - Cold climate for heat dissipation - tons of land
next_xibalba
I have been saying for years that the great gap for ML is that it isn't in space. Glad Google finally caught up with me.