zlacker

>>g-mork+(OP)
Either this is a straight up con, or Musk found a glitch in physics. It's extremely difficult to keep things cold in space.

>>alangi+u6
Setting aside the possibility it's window dressing for a financial bailout, there would be two ways compute in space makes sense:

1) new technology improves vacuum heat radiation efficiency

2) new technology reduces waste heat generation from compute

All the takes I've seen have been focused on #1, but I'm starting to wonder about #2... Specifically spintronics and photonic chips.

>>FloorE+Le
If you solve 2, heat dissipation goes away on earth too, so what’s the advantage of space

>>brando+Zf
I'm not the best person to make that case as I can only speculate (land cost, permitting, latency, etc). /Shrug

In all the conversations I've seen play out on hacker news about compute in space, what comes up every time is "it's unviable because cooling is so inefficient".

Which got me thinking, what if cooling needs dropped by orders of magnitude? Then I learned about photonic chips and spintronics.

>>FloorE+dj
Because everyone knows photonic chips and spintronics can only operate in space?

Other than some libertarian fantasy of escaping the will of the non-billionaire people, the question remains: what is the advantage of putting information systems in space? The only rational answer: to host things that are both globally illegal and profitable.