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it would raise the stock value of rocket producers like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Nailed it. Data centers in space is an objectively terrible idea but most people are too stupid to understand why. They see it as free real estate in the ignorance of the logistical problems of constructing structures in space large enough to be of any use, let alone powering and cooling them. The failure of the American education system has made the populace an easy hunting ground for modern Snake Oil salesmen.
Ding ding!
Also, it throws more junk in our orbit, is more difficult to maintain and upgrade, and has a significantly more catastrophic fail result.
But why do things logically or sustainably when you* can make money?
/* you = someone who already is hoarding a large portion of our wealth.
But then how do they make money out of it?
By scamming investors and fooling shareholders.
same way musk made a shitton of money with hyperloop: by getting other people to pay for it and then not actually do it.
I don't think it makes any sense either:
The only positive is that the energy will be cheap, and that the computers are safe except from nation state actors and untracked space debris.
I lean towards this being a narrative for the markets. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. claimed a 370 billion USD total addressable market (TAM) in space enabled solutions, and a 26.5 trillion USD TAM for AI in their S-1 filing before going public. They state within that their goal over time is to launch 100 gigawatts of compute to space each year.
By making the claim that this would be worthwhile they present themselves as uniquely positioned to profit from this situation. Moreso than other AI compute companies or other rocket launch companies.
No, it seems like you understand it perfectly.
You answered half of your own question.
"it would raise the value of rocket producers like SpaceX and Blue Origin."
The other thing is a complete lack of jurisdiction. At least theoretically, nobody can go after them for generating grossly illegal content in space.
Also, pure hypermasculine fetishism.
Also, pure hypermasculine fetishism.
This is the weirdest take on data centers ever.
there isn't any good reason. you should start giving less attention to those who shout loudest, IMO.
This idea is a total scam. This is just a way of asking investors for an enormous amount of money, with literally no intention of actually following through with it.
They might throw a couple of cheap satellites in orbit, just to say they "did it"...but no one with any actual comprehension of these things is honestly expecting it to yield results. The vast majority of that investment money, is going to be used for unrelated things.
In any sane world, this would be considered fraud. But, here we are.
Remember when Microsoft dumped containers of servers in the ocean to test things.
If they couldn't make that work they obviously can't make space work.
It was always a scam.
You're talking about project Natick. All reports I saw was that it was actually a resounding success. The only reason I've seen for why it was cancelled is because it wasn't able to be kept at the bleeding edge as they couldn't upgrade the servers randomly. It doesn't really compare to launching them into space which gives basically zero benefit but adds an insane amount to the cost.
There's no reason, Musk is just bullshiting like with Mars colony by 2025.
You just wouldn't. The ISS is the largest thing we've ever built in space previously. It has an internal area about equal to a 747 passenger jet. That's about 4800 sq ft, but the entire structure is about the size of a football field, with the solar panels needed to power it and whatnot - that's 57,800 sq ft total space taken up to get that 4800 sq ft. The average data center currently is around 100,000 sq ft. The ISS took about 1000 hours of space walking and 136 space flights to build. So we need 20 times the ISS to build one average data center, so 20,000 hours (that's a team of 10 people working 12 hour shifts for 166 days) of space walking to build, 2700 space flights, and it would^1^ take up over 1 million square feet of space in the sky.
OH, and that is completely ignoring the fact that ISS orbits earth in 90 minutes. Maintaining data transfer capabilities from that to Earth would be a nightmare and building a structure that big that close to Earth also means it's going to be BRIGHT in the night sky (like, ok, not as bright as a full moon or anything, but 20 times brighter than ISS which is the 3rd brightest thing in our night sky already... This data center would be well ahead and into the number 2 spot, you literally wouldn't be able to miss it).
OH OH, that is also ignoring how incredibly difficult it would be to cool. Cooling components on the ISS is one of the biggest challenges because there is nowhere for the heat to go. So add on hauling several million gallons of water to space every month I guess? I dunno what their plan would even look like for cooling that is such a monumental problem.
AND THAT IS JUST ONE AVERAGE DATA CENTER. The cost would be astronomical. The environmental impact would be devastating. The repercussions would be severe. The benefit would be almost non-existent and very short lived if there even was any.
^1^ - Ok, this is all napkin math based on what it took to build the ISS. Could it be done more efficiently the second time around? Maybe, but we aren't just talking about ISS 2: Electric Boogaloo either, we are talking about a giant 20x structure. Chances are it would be even worse than these estimates - and where the hell is SpaceX going to get the actual physical man-power to do the construction of this thing in orbit??
That also assumes this is done in the same orbit as the ISS right? The ISS isn't in a stable orbit, right?. It occasionally needs to adjust its orbit because of atmospheric drag. You're talking about 20x the area which could be a considerable difference in mass. That's more fuel needed per burn which also needs to be transported up to the data center. Otherwise you are looking at putting this thing in an even higher orbit which comes with its own host of problems.
Like, actually building a data center in space would bankrupt Space X. But the hype from a bunch of dumbasses saying they are going to makes them a shit load of money, because our system is dumb.
Oh yea, 100%. I meant to talk about that in my first "OH" section, lol. The ISS is low. You either have to build it further out or have a nearly constant supply of fuel to keep it in the sky. Building it further out means more fuel and time to get to it and less frequent viable mission launch windows, so more difficult to build, but that is still probably the smarter choice than building it at the ISS altitude and needing rocket fuel sent up almost as much as water for cooling...
I believe Apartheid Pedo cited space being cold as a reason (ie don't have to worry about cooling the servers), except as usual he's a fuckwit with no idea what he's talking about. Space is empty, which means there's nothing to carry heat away, so the only way to lose heat is via radiation. And that takes forever.
Yeah I think space stations have to literally worry about not radiating enough heat away. If there is no medium to transfer the heat into the heat can't really go away. One of the many unintuitive features of space
They're harder for us to burn to the fucking ground if we can't reach them.
ever heard of the Nazi bases on the moon?
yeah. that's why.
It's a shameless attempt to loop in their own assets to a free for all money spree. There is literally nothing about it that makes any sense. It would be more efficient to beam laser light back to earth to power a dc than this, and that's a stupid idea too.
It's a terribly inneficient idea, but it sounds futuristic, which is basically what Elon trades on to acquire government subsidies and investor buy-in.
My theory is that it's so they are beyond the reach of protesters, the law, etc. I think that is going to be a very in-demand property for servers going forward.
With the money that it costs to send an entire data center to space you can easily fortify and militarize your data center on earth to the extent that no protester will ever come close?
The law is anyway already largely under their control right? They don't have to go to space to evade the law.
And to the extent that the law still applies to them and constraints then, doesn't it also still apply to the necessary ground-based necessities for space based data centers? As in, if the state wants to shut them down, they can still do so?
The tech billiionaires got annoyed by regulations and complaints and are looking for a easier way.
We towed it outside the environment.
Into another environment, no?
Snake oil. As almost everything else.
Because it sounds like "future" to stupids.