@iHeartPowder@Dontlookformeit@kchau@grok that's what i fucking said, 150kw per satellite. we could argue about this shit all day but it's pointless. i have given my reasons for why i think this will be a non starter. maybe i'm wrong, i won't lose sleep over it. i'd be willing to bet money it doesn't happen though
@iHeartPowder@Dontlookformeit@kchau@grok please explain to us how a single starlink satellite (let alone a cluster of 40) is by any means on the same scale as a 150kw spaceborn data center. imagine this with a bleeding edge process node that would be available in say 5yrs
@Dontlookformeit@iHeartPowder@kchau@iHeartPowder did, that reply was to him. i've created a lot of cool things, i'm a software engineer myself and i love building projects with SBCs. nothing on the scale of spacex of course but i didn't claim to
@Dontlookformeit@iHeartPowder@kchau the cool thing about starlink is that each launch puts up 30 or so satellites, meanwhile the ISS took 42 separate assembly flights. we're talking about something the scale of the ISS here.
@iHeartPowder@Dontlookformeit@kchau 1) GFYS
2) a starlink satellite is not at all comparable in scale. 20-150W per satellite vs something the scale of the ISS. hundreds of ISS-sized floating data centers to give us the output of one ground-based data center?
whats unreal is your simping
@Jelepettos3@AdrianDittmann ha - beyond the feasibility of power and cooling i hadn’t even thought of the viable lifespan. all that money to put something in orbit that becomes obsolete in a couple of years.
it’s a cool idea but doesn’t make any sense in practice.
@JacobIvers@kchau waaay too late for that with them folding in the poison pill that is xAI. SpaceX is great. i wish elon stuck with the original plan and avoided getting caught up in the AI hypetrain.
the first waves of investors in the railroads and in the fiber optic buildout were wiped out.
@Dontlookformeit@kchau if we magically solve the problems of power consumption and heat generation such that putting them in space makes any kind of sense, WE WOULDN'T NEED TO PUT THEM IN SPACE
ISS solar arrays generate 84-120 kW average electrical power (peak ~240 kW). The station rejects ~70 kW waste heat via EATCS ammonia radiators (plus ~50+ kW from array systems), with total deployed radiator area ~600 m².
Large AI data centers draw 100-500+ MW (1,000-5,000x ISS scale). A spaceborne version would need ~1,000x+ radiator area to reject equivalent heat via radiation alone—hundreds of thousands of m². Higher temps shrink it via T⁴ scaling, but deployment, mass, and cooling electronics remain huge challenges. Radiation works in vacuum; scale is the issue.
@kchau@grok how much power do the solar panels collect on the ISS and what's the average heat energy radiated? how big are its heat radiators? comparatively, how much energy is required for an AI data center, and how many times larger would a spaceborne datacenter's radiators be?
@kchau he's right, of the three types of heat conduction, only radiated heat works in space. thermoses work on the same principle of insulation by eliminating air conduction.
yes, it's possible to radiate heat energy in space. not easily on the scale fucking data centers do though
@GAFollowers 1 out of every 100 deaths comes from car crashes. you have a higher chance of dying in a car that being a victim of every other possible type of crime that could occur on public transit by a HUGE margin
@knowitallmom@GreystokeTarzan@the_transit_guy driving sucks when everyone has to drive to get anywhere. imagine if the people who didn’t want to drive chose an alternative method. that would actually free up road capacity for those who *do* want or need to drive
@GreystokeTarzan@the_transit_guy stupid comment. i am a car guy, have always owned a car, but there is a different sense of freedom to be found when you are not chained to a vehicle to get around. you don’t always need to carry yourself around in your own mobile living room