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1. jedber+md[view] [source] 2025-05-13 21:37:18
>>wiley1+(OP)
I've been saying for a long time that we should consider remote areas for building datacenters for batch processing.

At first I thought the poles (of the planet) might be good. The cooling is basically free. But the energy and internet connectivity would be a problem. At the poles you can really only get solar about three months a year, and even then you need a lot of panels. Most of Antarctica is powered diesel because of this.

So the next thought was space. At the time, launching to space was way too costly for it to ever make sense. But now, with much cheaper launches, space is accessible.

Power seems easily solved. You can get lots of free energy from the sun with some modest panels. But to do that requires an odd orbit where you wouldn't be over the same spot on earth, which could make internet access difficult. Or you can go geostationary over a powerful ground station, but then you'd need some really big batteries for all the time you aren't in the sun.

But cooling is a huge problem. Space is cold, but there is no medium to transfer the heat away from the hot objects. I think this will be the biggest sticking point, unless they came up with an innovative solution.

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2. dfabul+If[view] [source] 2025-05-13 21:50:17
>>jedber+md
Their whitepaper explains their cooling "solution": https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf

> As conduction and convection to the environment are not available in space, this means the data center will require radiators capable of radiatively dissipating gigawatts of thermal load. To achieve this, Starcloud is developing a lightweight deployable radiator design with a very large area - by far the largest radiators deployed in space - radiating primarily towards deep space...

They claim they can radiate "633.08 W / m^2". At that rate, they're looking at square kilometers of radiators to dissipate gigawatts of thermal load, perhaps hectares of radiators.

They also claim that they can "dramatically increase" heat dissipation with heat pumps.

So, there you have it: "all you have to do" is deploy a few hectares of radiators in space, combined with heat pumps that can dissipate gigawatts of thermal load with no maintenance at all over a lifetime of decades.

This seems like the sort of "not technically impossible" problem that can attract a large amount of VC funding, as VCs buy lottery tickets that the problem can be solved.

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3. Invict+Ch[view] [source] 2025-05-13 22:04:40
>>dfabul+If
I don't get it--are the founders just grifters? How did this startup even make it off the drawing board?
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4. erulab+kk[view] [source] 2025-05-13 22:27:00
>>Invict+Ch
a 1% chance of making a billion dollars is worth 1 million dollars.
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5. mjcohe+Kn[view] [source] 2025-05-13 22:51:17
>>erulab+kk
10 million
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