zlacker

>>g-mork+(OP)
> The basic math is that launching a million tons per year of satellites generating 100 kW of compute power per ton would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs. Ultimately, there is a path to launching 1 TW/year from Earth.

> My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space.

This is so obviously false. For one thing, in what fantasy world would the ongoing operational and maintenance needs be 0?

>>rybosw+u5
You operate them like Microsoft's submerged data center project: you don't do maintenance, whatever fails fails. You start with enough redundancy in critical components like power and networking and accept that compute resources will slowly decrease as nodes fail

No operational needs is obviously ... simplified. You still need to manage downlink capacity, station keeping, collision avoidance, etc. But for a large constellation the per-satellite cost of that would be pretty small.

>>wongar+z8
You mean you operate them like Microsoft's failed submerged data center project [1]. When pointing at validating past examples you are generally supposed to point at successes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Natick

>>Veserv+nb
Did we read the same Wikipedia page? It doesn't say the word "failed" anywhere on it.

>>fragme+eh
> By 2024, Project Natick had been inactive for several years, though it was referenced in media as though it was ongoing. That year, Microsoft confirmed that the project was inactive and that it had no servers underwater.

I wouldn't exactly call this a success, for that matter.

>>tadfis+2m
To me, failed, implies some sort of real failure, not just, "eh, won't make us enough money" a la Google/business since forever/the exec who's pet project it was moved on/had babies/was fired for unrelated reasons/some other human thing unrelated to the technical proposition.

If, like, sea-water entered and corroded the system and it blew up and ate babies, and caused Godzilla, that would be a failure. It just being not quite interesting enough to go after seems... I mean I guess it is, but on a "meh" level.

>>fragme+EB1
"eh, won't make us enough money" would make space data centres a failure too. The whole point is to do compute more cheaply than a traditional data centre.