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
Only people who never interacted with data center reliability think it's doable to maintain servers with no human intervention.

>>lugao+DK
You are right. But in the future we'll be refueling the satellites anyway. Might as well maintain the servers using robots all in one go.

>>vagab0+ox2
Right now that’s not the case. Satellites just store whatever fuel they need for orbital adjustments and by default, they fall back to earth and burn up at the end of their life. All the Starlink satellites are configured to fall back to earth within 5 years (the fuel is used to re-raise their orbit). The new proposed datacenters would sit in a higher orbit to avoid debris, allegedly, but that means it is even more expensive to get to them and refuel them, and the potential for future debris is far worse (since it wouldn’t fall back to earth and burn up for centuries or millennia).