←back to thread

199 points angadh | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.666s | source
Show context
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.

replies(17): >>44393394 #>>44393436 #>>44393528 #>>44393553 #>>44393882 #>>44394969 #>>44395311 #>>44395355 #>>44396009 #>>44396843 #>>44397057 #>>44397975 #>>44398392 #>>44398563 #>>44406204 #>>44410213 #>>44414799 #
NitpickLawyer ◴[] No.44393882[source]
Appreciate the insights, but I think failing hardware is the least of their problems. In that underwater pod trial, MS saw lower failure rates than expected (nitrogen atmosphere could be a key factor there).

> The company only lost six of the 855 submerged servers versus the eight servers that needed replacement (from the total of 135) on the parallel experiment Microsoft ran on land. It equates to a 0.7% loss in the sea versus 5.9% on land.

6/855 servers over 6 years is nothing. You'd simply re-launch the whole thing in 6 years (with advances in hardware anyways) and you'd call it a day. Just route around the bad servers. Add a bit more redundancy in your scheme. Plan for 10% to fail.

That being said, it's a complete bonkers proposal until they figure out the big problems, like cooling, power, and so on.

replies(5): >>44394554 #>>44395262 #>>44397059 #>>44397611 #>>44397703 #
looofooo0 ◴[] No.44395262[source]
Power!? Isnt that just PV and batteries? LEO has like 1.5h orbit.
replies(2): >>44395673 #>>44399253 #
literalAardvark ◴[] No.44395673[source]
It's a Datacenter... I guess solar is what they're planning to use, but the array will be so large it'll have its own gravity well
replies(1): >>44397650 #
1. bevr1337 ◴[] No.44397650[source]
All mass has gravity
replies(1): >>44398745 #
2. swores ◴[] No.44398745[source]
Had they said "the array will be so large it'll have its own gravity." then you'd be making a valid point.

But they didn't say just "gravity", they said "gravity well".

> "First, let us simply define what a gravity well is. A gravity well is a term used metaphorically to describe the gravitational pull that a large body exerts in space."

- https://medium.com/intuition/what-are-gravity-wells-3c1fb6d6...

So they weren't suggesting that it will be big enough to get past some boundary below which things don't have gravity, just that smaller things don't have enough gravity to matter.

replies(1): >>44398908 #
3. bevr1337 ◴[] No.44398908[source]
Given all mass has gravity, and gravity can be metaphorically described by a well, all mass has a gravity well. It is not necessary for mass to capture other mass in its gravity. A well is a pleasant and relative metaphor humans can visualize - not a threshold reached after certain mass.

"Large" is almost meaningless in this context. Douglas Adams put it best

> Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

From an education site:

> Everything with mass is able to bend space and the more massive an object is, the more it bends

They start with an explanation of a marble compared to a bowling ball. Both have a gravity well, but one exerts far more influence

https://www.howitworksdaily.com/the-solar-system-what-is-a-g...