“It may actually be more affordable to build some kinds of high cost-per-kg structures (e.g. datacenters...”
There is a company called Starcloud attempting to do exactly this (recently they launched their first H100). A lot of critics say the heat dissipation through radiation is an issue (radiation is the least effective form of thermal transfer), so their core IP is essentially giant expandable heatsinks.
I havent looked at it in much detail, but it sounds like a bad idea. Mostly as I am not sure the ‘benefits’ listed make much sense.
‘No fresh water needed’ - if your heat disipation tech is good enough to run it without water, then why not run it on land without water? Land gets air cooling for free in addition to whatever tech you are running, space doesnt.
‘Frees up space on land’ - if you dont care about internet ping, then land has plenty of empty deserts you can build in. If every square meter of the earth is filling up then going underground or underwater are also surely cheaper than space.
‘Solar’ - This one makes sense.
Another downside to note—increased radiation exposure. That presumably cuts the lifetime of the chips.
The argument as I understand it—and to my surprise when I did some napkin math it checked out—is that the efficiency advantage of having your solar panels in space (no atmosphere/clouds, no nighttime) is huge and offsets literally all the other disadvantages, from launch costs to the need for fancy radiators.
“It may actually be more affordable to build some kinds of high cost-per-kg structures (e.g. datacenters...”
There is a company called Starcloud attempting to do exactly this (recently they launched their first H100). A lot of critics say the heat dissipation through radiation is an issue (radiation is the least effective form of thermal transfer), so their core IP is essentially giant expandable heatsinks.
Benefits:
No fresh water needed
Frees up space on land
Solar powered
Cons:
Latency
Maintenance
Harder to stop the AIs by force
I havent looked at it in much detail, but it sounds like a bad idea. Mostly as I am not sure the ‘benefits’ listed make much sense.
‘No fresh water needed’ - if your heat disipation tech is good enough to run it without water, then why not run it on land without water? Land gets air cooling for free in addition to whatever tech you are running, space doesnt.
‘Frees up space on land’ - if you dont care about internet ping, then land has plenty of empty deserts you can build in. If every square meter of the earth is filling up then going underground or underwater are also surely cheaper than space.
‘Solar’ - This one makes sense.
Another downside to note—increased radiation exposure. That presumably cuts the lifetime of the chips.
The argument as I understand it—and to my surprise when I did some napkin math it checked out—is that the efficiency advantage of having your solar panels in space (no atmosphere/clouds, no nighttime) is huge and offsets literally all the other disadvantages, from launch costs to the need for fancy radiators.