Project Suncatcher im Freakonomics Podcast: Eine andere Sicht auf orbitale Datenzentren
Project Suncatcher im Freakonomics Podcast: Eine andere Sicht auf orbitale Datenzentren
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Interesting to me that this Google/Alphabet project was mentioned/released to the public a month before SpaceX’s plans for their orbital data centers but gets almost zero mentions in any of the discussion (Not even as a „Elon’s doing a ‚me too!‘).
Anyways, what /r/space needs is another thread to argue about the viability of the concept.
Is this an hour of people laughing because that’s about how viable orbital datacenters as a concept are
This was the most rationale take on AI data centres I’ve come across so far. But….lets be clear….in either Project Suncatcher or SpaceX the goalposts of what they consider a data centre is significantly different than massive earth based data centres.
What they are talking about are micro sized satellites that are cheap to produce, are realitively lightweight, and require rather small solar panels / radiators for cooling. Ultimately though, they are a constellation of devices, much like Starlink, that can transmit data via the speed of light (much faster than glass or fibre optics on earth) and so the endless access to power and the data transmission speeds within space have advantages for certain applications.
Part 1 of the episode did not discuss data transfer rates / latency from the satellites back to earth. What intrigued me was the problems to solve were all within the realms of known physics and so this isn’t so much an issue of the thermodynamics of cooling in space, rather it is bringing the cost of sending reusable rockets carrying heavy payloads into space.
This might actually be viable, but in a different sense of massive „data centres“ we know of here on earth.
Is this similar to what Loft Orbital already does today?
Freakonomics still exists? After all the nonsense they argued?
It was an entertaining podcast and the theories are interesting. That said from everything I’ve heard so far it will always be cheaper and better to build on Earth unless you need the computing power to be in space for a specific reason. They touched on that with specific use satellites. However the data centers needed for earth-based AI are unrealistic in space. Maybe there is some hidden legal reason that would make space computing profitable. There’s simply no reason to believe technology for terrestrial data centers wouldn’t keep at a pace with developing space technology and keep costs lower on earth. The only advantage to space would be constant access to solar energy but nuclear seems cheaper and more sustainable.