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199 points angadh | 22 comments | | HN request time: 1.319s | 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. oceanplexian ◴[] No.44393528[source]
Why does it need to be robots?

On Earth we have skeleton crews maintain large datacenters. If the cost of mass to orbit is 100x cheaper, it’s not that absurd to have an on-call rotation of humans to maintain the space datacenter and install parts shipped on space FedEx or whatever we have in the future.

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2. monster_truck ◴[] No.44393575[source]
That isn't going to last for much longer with the way power density projections are looking.

Consider that we've been at the point where layers of monitoring & lockout systems are required to ensure no humans get caught in hot spots, which can surpass 100C, for quite some time now.

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3. Robotbeat ◴[] No.44393751[source]
Bingo.

It's all contingent on a factor of 100-1000x reduction in launch costs, and a lot of the objections to the idea don't really engage with that concept. That's a cost comparable to air travel (both air freight and passenger travel).

(Especially irritating is the continued assertion that thermal radiation is really hard, and not like something that every satellite already seems to deal with just fine, with a radiator surface much smaller than the solar array.)

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4. Robotbeat ◴[] No.44393753[source]
You mean like every single kitchen?
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5. weq ◴[] No.44393841[source]
Musk is already in the testing phase for this. His starship rockets should be reusable as soon as 2018!
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6. wmf ◴[] No.44393919[source]
Yeah, just attach a Haven module to the data center.
7. Nevermark ◴[] No.44394009{3}[source]
And in the meantime, he has responsibly redistributed and recycled their mass. Avoiding any concern that Earth's mass could be negatively impacted.
8. mavhc ◴[] No.44394886{3}[source]
How will he overtake all the other reusable rockets at this rate?
9. verzali ◴[] No.44395147[source]
It is really hard, and it is something you need to take into careful consideration when designing a satellite.

It is really fucking hard when you have 40MW of heat being generated that you somehow have to get rid of.

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10. verzali ◴[] No.44395151[source]
If you want to have people you need to add in a whole lot of life support and additional safety to keep people alive. Robots are easier, since they don't die so easily. If you can get them to work at all, that is.
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11. intended ◴[] No.44395293[source]
Life support can be on the shuttle/transport. Or it can be its own hab… space office ? Space workshop ?
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12. HPsquared ◴[] No.44395346{3}[source]
It's all relative. Is it harder than getting 40MW of (stable!) power? Harder than packaging and launching the thing? Sure it's a bit of a problem, perhaps harder than other satellites if the temperature needs to be lower (assuming commodity server hardware) so the radiator system might need to be large. But large isn't the same as difficult.
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13. kranke155 ◴[] No.44396298{3}[source]
What about food, water and air filtration needs?
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14. Robotbeat ◴[] No.44396722{3}[source]
Well sure. If you think fully reusable rockets won’t ever happen, then the datacenter in space thing isn’t viable. But THAT’S where the problem is, not innumerate bullcrap about size of radiators.

(And of course, the mostly reusable Falcon 9 is launching far more mass to orbit than the rest of the world combined, launching about 150 times per year. No one yet has managed to field a similarly highly reusable orbital rocket booster since Falcon 9 was first recovered about 10 years ago in 2015).

15. dweinus ◴[] No.44397209{3}[source]
You might be thinking of 100F, a toasty summer day. 100C on the other hand (about 212F) is fatal even in zero humidity.
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16. Mtinie ◴[] No.44397335{4}[source]
Presumably those needs are handled on the habitat where the orbital maintenance team lives when they aren’t visiting satellite data centers.

Treat each maintenance trip like an EVA (extra vehicular activity) and bring your life support with you.

17. tokai ◴[] No.44397346{4}[source]
Thats life support.
18. globalise83 ◴[] No.44398662{4}[source]
Well, after a while. A decently hot Finnish sauna...
19. MPSimmons ◴[] No.44399181{4}[source]
Neither getting 40MW of power nor removing 40MW of heat are easy.

The ISS makes almost 250KW in full light, so you would need approximately 160 times the solar footprint of the ISS for that datacenter.

The ISS dissipates that heat using pumps to move ammonia in pipes out to a radiator that is a bit over 42m^2. Assuming the same level of efficiency, that's over 6km^2 of heat dissipation that needs empty space to dissipate to.

That's a lot.

20. monster_truck ◴[] No.44400719{3}[source]
No, I mean like you crumple to the ground and cook to death if there isn't someone close enough to grab you within a few minutes. 212F ambient air. Like the inside of a meat smoker, but big enough for humans.

DC's aren't quite there yet, but the hot spots that do occur are enough to cause arc flashes which claim hundreds of lives a year.

21. 1718627440 ◴[] No.44404346{4}[source]
Wait, so we need 40MW of electricity and have 40MW of thermal energy. Can't we reuse some of that?
22. spauldo ◴[] No.44406420[source]
This sort of work is ideal for robots. We don't do it much on Earth because you can pay a tech $20/hr to swap hardware modules, not because it's hard for robots to do.