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Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

(angadh.com)
199 points angadh | 1 comments | 26 Jun 25 20:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.322s | source
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energywut ◴[26 Jun 25 20:49 UTC] No.44391208[source]▶
Putting a datacenter in space is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while.

Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of batteries

Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to?

Latency? Highly variable.

Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible.

Radiation shielding? Not free.

Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous!

Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and keep them fueled.

There's no upside, it's only downsides as far as I can tell.

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oceanplexian ◴[27 Jun 25 03:57 UTC] No.44393578[source]▶
We’re probably thinking of it the wrong way. Instead of a single datacenter it’s more likely we build constellations and then change the way we write software.

There will probably be a lot more edge computing in the future. 20 years ago engineers scoffed at the idea of deploying code into a dozen regions (If you didn’t have a massive datacenter footprint) but now startups do it casually like it’s no big deal. Space infrastructure will probably have some parallels.

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1. rtpg ◴[27 Jun 25 04:22 UTC] No.44393680[source]▶
> 20 years ago engineers scoffed at the idea of deploying code into a dozen regions (If you didn’t have a massive datacenter footprint) but now startups do it casually like it’s no big deal.

Are there many startups actually taking real advantage of edge computing? Smaller B2B places don't really need it, larger ones can just spin up per-region clusters.... and then for 2C stuff you're mainly looking at static asset stuff which is just CDNs?

Who's out there using edge computing to good effect?