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199 points angadh | 9 comments | | HN request time: 0.361s | source | bottom
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GlenTheMachine ◴[] No.44393313[source]
Space roboticist here.

As with a lot of things, it isn't the initial outlay, it's the maintenance costs. Terrestrial datacenters have parts fail and get replaced all the time. The mass analysis given here -- which appears quite good, at first glance -- doesn't including any mass, energy, or thermal system numbers for the infrastructure you would need to have to replace failed components.

As a first cut, this would require:

- an autonomous rendezvous and docking system

- a fully railed robotic system, e.g. some sort of robotic manipulator that can move along rails and reach every card in every server in the system, which usually means a system of relatively stiff rails running throughout the interior of the plant

- CPU, power, comms, and cooling to support the above

- importantly, the ability of the robotic servicing system toto replace itself. In other words, it would need to be at least two fault tolerant -- which usually means dual wound motors, redundant gears, redundant harness, redundant power, comms, and compute. Alternately, two or more independent robotic systems that are capable of not only replacing cards but also of replacing each other.

- regular launches containing replacement hardware

- ongoing ground support staff to deal with failures

The mass analysis also doesn't appear to include the massive number of heat pipes you would need to transfer the heat from the chips to the radiators. For an orbiting datacenter, that would probably be the single biggest mass allocation.

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1. protocolture ◴[] No.44393436[source]
Did Microsoft do any of that with their submersible tests?

My feeling is that, a bit like starlink, you would just deprecate failed hardware, rather than bother with all the moving parts to replace faulty ram.

Does mean your comms and OOB tools need to be better than the average american colo provider but I would hope that would be a given.

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2. protocolture ◴[] No.44393486[source]
>The mass analysis also doesn't appear to include the massive number of heat pipes you would need to transfer the heat from the chips to the radiators. For an orbiting datacenter, that would probably be the single biggest mass allocation.

And once you remove all the moving parts, you just fill the whole thing with oil rather than air and let heat transfer more smoothly to the radiators.

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3. littlestymaar ◴[] No.44394027[source]
First, oil is much heavier than air.

Second: you still need radiators to dissipate heat that is in oil somehow.

4. sagarm ◴[] No.44394033[source]
Does using oil solve the mass problem? Liquids aren't light.
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5. protocolture ◴[] No.44394075{3}[source]
I would wager that its lighter than:

Repair robots

Enough air between servers to allow robots to access and replace componentry.

Spare componentry.

An eject/return system.

Heatpipes from every server to the radiators.

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6. MadnessASAP ◴[] No.44394167[source]
Oil, like air, doesn't convent well in 0G, you'll need pretty hefty pumps and well designed layouts to ensure no hot spots form. Heat pipes are at least passive and don't depend on gravity.
7. qmr ◴[] No.44394266[source]
Mineral oil density is around 900kg / cubic meter.

Not sure this is such a great idea.

8. junon ◴[] No.44394309{4}[source]
I would wager it isn't.
9. spauldo ◴[] No.44406357{4}[source]
A light oil has a density of 700kg per cubic meter. Most common oils are denser.

Then you'd need vanes, agitators, and pumps to keep the oil moving around without forming eddies. These would need to be fairly bulky compared to fans and fan motors.

I'd have to see what an engineering team came up with, but at first glance the liquid solution would be much heavier and likely more maintenance intensive.