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199 points angadh | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.446s | source
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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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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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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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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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1. kranke155 ◴[] No.44396298[source]
What about food, water and air filtration needs?
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2. Mtinie ◴[] No.44397335[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.

3. tokai ◴[] No.44397346[source]
Thats life support.