Jeff Bezos envisions space-based data centers in 10 to 20 years — could allow for natural cooling and more effective solar power
Jeff Bezos envisions space-based data centers in 10 to 20 years — could allow for natural cooling and more effective solar power
Yeah, like let’s put our servers in a gigantic Yeti mug. That’ll help them cool off.
Don't get me wrong, this is a stupid idea and will not work due to a huge list of issues aside from cooling (some of which you mentioned).
With that said, natural cooling is commonly understood to be very simply piping in air from the outside instead of using AC. Very efficient in Iceland, Sweden, Norway, etc.
Natural cooling, in this context, implies that he's incredibly uninformed about what happens to heat in a vacuum. As you said, cooling is a huge problem because there's no medium for the heat to transfer to (like air does on earth). From my understanding, you need to build that medium yourself (like a brick of metal or something) to take that heat which then slowly emits as infrared.
I think he thinks „space is cold, therefore we can use space cold to cool servers“
Wow almost like he has no idea that radiating heat in space is really difficult
relatively easy cooling
Does this guy know anything about how heat transfers in a vacuum? Seriously, dumb fucking billionaire needs to read about how the international space station manages heat. Meanwhile on Earth we have the luxury of a fuckton of water to manage heat.
Of course he knows how space works. Mr. Beezos thought about studying physics, you know! /s
Forget cooling and maintenance; let's call that engineering minutia.
...Does he realize how mind-bendingly difficult sending a pound (much less tons) to orbit is?
This reminds me of how Musk and his evangelists talk about colonizing mars, when it would be orders of magitude cheaper and easier to, say... live in the mariana trench.
Or under the antarctic ice sheet.
Or in Kilauea's open lava pit.
Those would all be cheaper spots for datacenters.
I mean, it's fine to not understand the 'tyrrany of the rocket equation,' but please, let people who do make the plans instead.
Radiation is another challenge for computers in space, so just expecting to stick existing hardware in a space data center won’t work as expected. Massive shielding or more specialized hardware and software will be required like what is described here: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/nasa-to-test-solution-for-radiation-tolerant-computing-in-space/
Existing hardware might work with a lot of mass for shielding, but as others have already mentioned, the rocket equation.
Here’s a highly relevant excerpt:
computers in space are susceptible to ionizing solar and cosmic radiation. Just one high-energy particle can trigger a so-called “single event effect,” causing minor data errors that lead to cascading malfunctions, system crashes, and permanent damage
This effect is already taken into account on a lot of enterprise data systems. Bit flip errors due to radiation are monitored and corrected. Not sure how high the erorr rate could be before the system falls apart though
Low earth orbit is still inside the magnetic field, and keeps things within decent latency range.
Deep space data centers would be in a bigger radiation environment and also huge latency problems.
Yeah, true, maybe not as big of a problem in that case.
Natural cooling? Does this dipshit have any idea how hard cooling things in a vacuum is? He's probably just trying to sucker Sam Altman into announcing he's "building" his data centers in space (thanks to Blue Origin, naturally) as he is forced to make increasingly ludicrous claims about OpenAI to continue forcing fart gas into the bubble.
Um.... Space isn't cold. Space is literally nothing. You dissipate heat slowly.
He would have a better time having his data centers in the ocean.
This is a reminder that rich people can be as dumb as anybody else.
(not that we are short of examples, these days)
I wonder if Bezos even considers the possibility that he might have more pressing problems in 10 to 20 years? Sure, US is pretty meek and conformist by global standards (South Korea, which seems to have what people consider to be a conformist leaning culture was able to impeach Yoon Suk Yeol), but even there you can't put down the human spirit.
Ah yes, the perfect solution is always 10 to 20 years away, we only need to endure the current grind.
Can't wait one their orbit boost propulsion to fail so I can have one of their rack mounts fall through my roof.
Well, it's about time to we became a Tessier-Ashpoll AI controled society...
Neuromancer's world felt exciting and novel, but it did not sound like a good place to live for the average person.
Well, i never implied this world will became a good place to live neither
Natural cooling, in a vacuum. Isn't that kind of like natural wetting, through a rubber glove?
You're correct, radiating away heat and space is a pain in the butt implies a large amount of mass if you're on a spacing trip do you have a higher likelihood of cooking to death than freezing to death
dude you don't get it space is cold
Heat doesn’t transfer in a vacuum like it does in air.