zlacker

>>g-mork+(OP)
> it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power

We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. The proposal here is to launch that much to space every 9 hours, complete with attached computers, continuously, from the moon.

edit: Also, this would capture a very trivial percentage of the Sun's power. A few trillionths per year.

>>gok+h4
Is there a credible way to cool a space-based data center on that scale?

>>paperc+3E
There's not even a credible way to transfer meaningful amounts of data to and from a deep-space based data center.

What good is compute if you can't interface with it? This is where we are now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Optical_Communicati...

SpaceX may be leading in short-range (few hundred km) space-to-space data transfer but there is a long way to go for terabit/s deep-space links.