Thread

Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space

233 points · 553 comments · xnx

zactato · 1790267254 · focus · HN ↗
How are they solving the heat dissipation issues?
1. lopsotronic · 1790268994 · focus · HN ↗
  For real. It's an enormous problem solved only with 1) sheer scale, and 2) Science Fiction.
  Both of those are expensive as hell, by the way.
  Cooling via radiation follows Stefan–Boltzmann: P = εσAT⁴. Let's assume a good surface (emissivity ~0.9) at 300 K (27 °C) at 400 W per square meter per side. A flat panel radiating from both faces into deep space gets 800 W/m, not including the losses from, say, the Sun, or from IR coming off the Earth. Now, input power. Sunlight in orbit ~1,360 W/m², assume ~22% cell efficiency, we got 300 W/m². So each 1 MW compute, 3,300 m² of solar panel and minimum 1,200–1,500 m² of radiator.
  In case ya didn't know - 1 MW is tiny from a present-day-datacenter perspective. It's like 8 racks. So we're talking orbital megastructures here, many many many square kilometers, and this is with all the best case assumptions, and magic radiator panels that never see the sun, or the earth, or the moon.
  This is just the basic numbers here, by the way. There's a garbage truck full of other unsolvable problems if you poke your head in there.
  Aside from the "Avoid Regulations" aspect, and the "Everything That Burns Deorbiting is Depreciation" aka "The Starlink Trick", I'm not sure what the hell the draw is.
  1. m4rtink · 1790273632 · focus · HN ↗
    Cooling in space is hard but not impossible - while current (IMHO stupid without advanced in space infra) space data center projects work with a couple MW, many advanced space propulsion concepts might have to reject hundreds of MW if not a couple GW.
    For that you might need more advanced stuff like liquid droplet radiators (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_droplet_radiator" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_droplet_radiator), heat sinks & pulsed operation. Still, it should be eventually doable.
    As for space data centers - I think the main issue is the complete lack of in space infrastructure for resource mining, processing and manufacturing & maintenance. It is kinda like building your first practical steam locomotive & the deciding to build directly an airliner. No suitable materils, experience, work force, material sources, etc.
    We eventually went from locomotives to airliner, in an incremental manner & expanding the supporting infrastructure to support the ever more ambitious projects.
    ruszki · 1790280077 · focus · HN ↗
    According to Wikipedia this reduces weight and not the required area. Also AI said the same thing, but I can't trust in it this blindly. So, how smaller would be the required surface area?
    DanHulton · 1790281611 · focus · HN ↗
    It might be eventually doable, as an experiment or as a flex, sure. But it's never going to come close to being cost-reasonable versus the equivalent infrastructure here on earth.
    asdff · 1790283421 · focus · HN ↗
    The security advantages are enormous since access to space is so tightly restricted and controlled, compared to the access potential of a land based data center. Only risk in space is maybe we start WWIII with china and the US directly trading blows. On the ground, any insurgent group can disable your infrastructure. Nothing is truly safe on the surface of the earth. Anyone can strap a bomb on a drone now. See examples from the currently active wars.
    ForHackernews · 1790283739 · focus · HN ↗
    What? No, exactly the opposite. It's very easy to jam radio signals and much harder to cut wires. There's a reason the drones on the front lines in Ukraine are dragging fibre optic lines these days.
    asdff · 1790285768 · focus · HN ↗
    There's probably so many ways to get around that with space based technology. I can quickly imagine several methods. It depends on what the system is for which might be a good method to use.
    Method 1: same as how u2 planes dumped their data: air drop physical media containing data and catch it in the air.
    Method 2: laser based emission to specific detectors.
    Method 3: baseball style communication: station is under observation and manipulates in some way to serve as a signalling language.
    Method 4: numbers station
    Method 5: bill yourself as an isp and have some coded syntax that can be supplied in plain sight with the rest of isp traffic.
    7e · 1790287610 · focus · HN ↗
    It costs at least 50x more to put a GPU in space than it does on Earth. For that price you can have dozens more capacity in bunkers, under the sea, or on remote islands. Do you think your insurgents are going to get all two dozen? They could travel to the far corners of the earth, destroying 22 of them, and you'd still be ahead. Further, I wouldn't be surprised if a satellite with such a monstrous solar and radiator footprint wouldn't be susceptible to a laser based attack from the ground; either frying it or pushing it into an unstable orbit by vaporizing a few bits.
    jryle70 · 1790296044 · focus · HN ↗
    It costs much more than 50 times because there are no GPUs in space yet. Google is only planning to have some sort of space data centers mid 2030s, if everything works out. A big if, but if they don't start now then we'll never know.
    toephu2 · 1790289804 · focus · HN ↗
    > But it's never going to come close
    never? I doubt that.
    Technology will improve over time. Eventually I bet it will become cheaper.
    Have you tried building in the U.S.? Why do you think it's so expensive to build in the U.S.? It's due to regulation and red tape.
    unrented7977 · 1790292240 · focus · HN ↗
    Technology improves, but the laws of physics are constant and absolute (on human timescales).
    Thermodynamics says no today, no tomorrow, and no 100 years from now. That's not ever going to change.
    lopsotronic · 1790367612 · focus · HN ↗
    The United States is relatively expensive because the world's cash reserves are priced in USD, and a large fraction of the eastern Eurasian continent lives inside a work camp.
    The old Chicago School boogeymen of unions, regulations, and red tape are effectors, but they're a pimple on the back of the world-mutating effects of seven-some decades of USD Seigniorage.
    I imagine we're going to be living through the reverse of this Seigniorage experiment quite soon.

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