That doesn't sound right to me. If there's no air, then only black body radiation can be used to cool the data center. That means a massive radiator, a lot larger than a heat-to-air radiator+fan used on earth.
edit:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9646997/ ("Thermophysical properties of the regolith on the lunar far side revealed by the in situ temperature probing of the Chang’E-4 mission")
Comparing against reference tables, it's more insulating than rock wool insulation,
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_42...
1. Put data on the moon
2. ???
3. Profit
For more info, check out their promotional video: https://www.lonestarlunar.com/video
For all the heroics needed to establish this ok the moon, the efforts and costs are much less back home.
I can't find anything related to cooling on Intuitive Machines website. BTW, the website looks like investor bait, not a real company that has a future.
> yes, the files are still here if you need them--well out of reach of pretty much everybody.
But geothermal cooling would be great on the moon too. Run a pipe 2 meters under the lunar surface and it is -21C.
I think the whole idea though is to make a low wattage space-stead so you can store copies of Moana out of reach of Disney cease and desist letters.
Isn't the moon geologically dead though - no water or geological movements?
I worry this would just result in the ground absorbing the waste heat and eventually becoming too warm to effectively cool anything. Especially because the ground itself would eventually still be limited by the rate of radiative cooling into space, right?
Obviously things like the diffusivity (so conductivity, mass, density etc) of the ground matter a lot, as does the rate of heat exchange at the surface for it to reject (or absorb) heat to the environment.
Feel free to invest though, perhaps if you feel good about discarding hard drives on the moon I could interest you in space mirrors and for a low low price I'll lease you the spot where your harddrive lands for 100 years.
"Amit Verma, a professor of electrical engineering at Texas A&M University Kingsville who is not affiliated with the project, says there may be technical advantages to hosting data on the moon as well. Some parts of the moon are permanently shadowed and therefore extremely cold, as low as -173 °C. This means that no energy or water would need to be expended to cool the data center. And the electrical components will perform more efficiently."
I'm guessing Verma only thought about the electrical aspects, and simply didn't think about the different atmospheric conditions (i.e. not having one) as that's outside of the conditions an electrical engineer typically deals with. I can see how someone can make such a "oops, didn't think of that" mistake when a journalist asks for a comment.
Surely it's selenthermal cooling at that point.
I would expect the regolith to be a poor thermal conductor. Not useful for heat exchanger
The real business is the fake contracting companies the founders own who will hoover up all the contracts, do a lot of on-paper contracting making the founders very wealthy before the fake lunar business goes bankrupt.
Okay, so here me out: the ultimate cold storage for someone like Iron Mountain. You'd have to understand that you'll need a minimum of 96 hours for retrieval time, and it's gonna be expensive to get that retrieval rocket there and back. Or, build a big dish and send the data via satellite signals.
to put it into numbers - at 80C (353K) 1m2 radiates 880Watts
I think though that instead of the Moon we'll be putting data centers into orbit - for 1KWt GPU we'll need 5m2 solar panels and 1m2 radiator - all together under 10kg, ie. $1000 at Starship prices while the GPU itself is $20K+ .
The kicker here is that the Starship launch price is cheaper than installing solar on the ground ( $2K/KWt and higher)
You know what they say, 3-2-1 backup: three copies of your data, stored on two different types of media, with one copy kept offsite to guard against common-cause data loss. Depending on the cause, off-site could be a difficult place to go!
It won't stay -21C for very long, if you pump heat into it.
Really, radiative cooling is your only longer term option.
Btw, you can make your radiative cooling a lot more efficient than you gave in your example, if you run it at a higher temperature. Radiated power grows with the fourth power of (absolute) temperature. So, run your chips at something closer to eg 100C and you radiate more than 2.5x as much power.
But for radiative cooling, vacuum with a clear view of the night sky is orders of magnitude better.
It's a startup forum. People commenting here have real world experience with startups. Might they not be commenting on what they see and know?
Like geothermal cooling, kinda. Possibly a passive solution could work somewhat?
It'll be a temporary solution, the regolith will heat up eventually, but maybe it'll work for long enough?
I'd love to know how they plan to offset the cost of moving every single nut and bolt to the moon with... Cheaper cooling?
I mean, Microsoft experimented with sinking data centers under the ocean. That's certainly cheaper and more performant than shooting a rocket to the moon. That experiment ended. Why?
Oh, we're overpopulated? Buy some single-family homes, buy out the government, and upzone it into apartments. You're still cheaper than space flight and with a shorter commute to work than Rapture
1) At the moment, we can't even get living people off the international space station let alone land on the moon and take off from the same spot twice.
2) If a space based proof of concept was practical, why would we not store our hard drive on the ISS. It is looking for some excuse to remain in operation and we can already come and go from it on a semi-regular basis?
3) If there was a global catastrophe to the extent that only moon based archives remained, then how are we going to go get them? This crisis destroys all data archives but preserves our space program?
4) Once we did get the drive back, what exactly might we do with it considering all other forms of data storage were destroyed?
5) If the data on the drive was so valuable that we were willing to pay millions of dollars for the chance that after Armageddon we could still get it back... Then why would the Chinese not just wait for us to place the drive then go get it themselves? Surely you would never encrypt it as the key would be just as vulnerable to loss as the data.
We can't even get people back from the ISS in 96 days.
This is absolute garbage. It's not even close to being true. Since the astronauts arrived on the Boeing craft, SpaceX has delivered and retrieved other astronauts. They are not still on the ISS because there's no ability to bring humans back, but because of a scheduling logistics situation.
Continuing to push this scheduling snafu as being unable is just nonsense, and you are as well for pushing it.
> 2) If a space based proof of concept was practical, why would we not store our hard drive on the ISS. It is looking for some excuse to remain in operation and we can already come and go from it on a semi-regular basis?
There's only so much space on the ISS. Also, it's being decommissioned soon, so unless some company wants to take it over as a business--which NASA is open to yet no takers--they've contracted SpaceX to de-orbit the station.
You are right, and also it would require digging which is a lot harder than laying out panels on the surface. Back of the napkin it's a tossup depending on the conductivity of lunar sub-surface material and how much pipe you lay. Just like on Earth.
> Btw, you can make your radiative cooling a lot more efficient than you gave in your example
This is true too, heat pumps could even get higher radiator temps than 100C if you like.
I agree with that. Just not for the heating/cooling reasons.
> Where will you get the immense energy needed to melt supercooled ice?!
The problem was too much heat. Now it's too little heat. You can't have both. The energy comes from the server farm. The coolant comes from the ice. You melt your first ice with the heat from the server farm (or an initial solar field).
I'm not sure that actually works out to your advantage, because the heat pumps themselves produce extra heat. But I haven't done the math on that.
The problem isn't so much geological activity or lack thereof, as the nature of lunar regolith. Lunar regolith has a conductivity of 0.004W/mK. That is lower than aerogel! So unless the subsurface has a much higher conductivity, using subsurface cooling would be doomed.
Edit: Lunar Regolith is only the first 4-5 meters of the lunar surface.
Although the regolith is only 4-5 meters thick, so you could probably just go under it and see what the subsurface is like with regards to conductivity.