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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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I was also momentarily nerdsniped earlier by looking up the capacity of space power tech[0] (panel yields, battery technology, power density references), but bailed early because it'll actually need some proper spelunking. doubly so because I'm not even nearly an expert on space shit
in case anyone else wants to go dig through that, the idea: for compute you need power (duh). to have power you need to have a source of energy (duh). and for orbitals, you're either going to be doing loops around the planetoid of your choice, or geostationery. given that you're playing balancing jenga between at minimum weight, compute capacity, and solar yield, you're probably going to end up with a design that preferences high-velocity orbitals that have a minimal amount of time in planetoid shadow, which to me implies high chargerate, extremely high cycle count ceiling (supercaps over batteries?), and whatever compute you can make fit and fly on that. combined with whatever the hell you need to do to fit your supposed computational models/delivery in that
this is probably worth a really long essay, because which type of computing your supposed flying spacerack handles is going to be extremely selected by the above constraints. if you could even make your magical spacechip fucking exist in the first place, which is a whole other goddamn problem
[0] - https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/sst-soa/power-subsystems/ (warning: this can make hours of your day disappear)
dusk-dawn orbit is a thing if you don't care too hard about where exactly to put it
but it's gonna be so fucking expensive, what they're trading off so it's even remotely worth it? do they think it's outside of any jurisdiction?
yeah I thought about that but I took it in light of "data center", i.e. presuming that you'd want continuous availability of that. part of what I mean with it being worth a long essay - there's a couple of ways to configure the hypothetical way this would operate, and each has significant impacts on the shape of the thing
yep. that's the thing that's so wild about this fairy picture. option 1) make your entire compute infra earthside[0], launch it all, and get .... the node compute equivalent of 3 stacked raspberry and a 2017 gpu, at a costpoint in the high 4 digits or more... or option 2, where you just shove a dc full of equipment for the price of like 20 such nodes, and have the compute equivalent of a significant number of mid-range hosters
even if (and this is extreme wand waving) you could crack non-planetbound production for the entire process and fab all this shit in space (incl. the mining and refining and ....) as a way to reduce costs, you still have all these other problems too. and it's not like this is likely to happen any time soon
guess they better hope 'ole ray has another vision soon, to get a fixed date for the singularity. can't see how you do your scrum planning for this fantasy without a target date provided by the singularitian prophet
wait it's all ray kurzweil?
dunno if the aforementioned jazz is (I didn't check), but rayboi is the easiest "and then compute things just become magically solved" touchstone for me to remember
too many of the fucking nutjobs to properly track who's the steering committee for each insane idea