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Google's first Suncatcher orbital data center test launches October 1

52 points · 96 comments · sbulaev

  1. logancbrown · · focus · HN ↗
    Genuine question: why are there so many people up-in-arms on orbital data centers? Like they have a personally vested interest in ensuring their opinions on failure are correct? There are many people on HN that despise it and say it will not and will never work, but here we are, they are flying them up to space and presumably, will start working soon.
    1. senordevnyc · · focus · HN ↗
      Actually, some of us predicted exactly what’s about to happen: these companies will launch a handful of GPUs into space, declare that it’s “working”, and then continue to build out terrestrial data centers at orders of magnitude faster rate.

      No one is saying it’s impossible to put operating GPUs in space. People are saying that the economics of this make zero sense, and there seem to be hard physical limits for how much you can change parts of the reasons why. This test does absolutely nothing to disprove that.

      1. NetMageSCW · · focus · HN ↗
        Plenty of people are saying it is impossible to operate GPUs in space. They are about to be proven wrong, and then very wrong.

        Economics are another matter.

        1. senordevnyc · · focus · HN ↗
          Again, no one is saying that. I bet there are GPUs in space now! What do you think that even proves?
        2. rsynnott · · focus · HN ↗
          This little satellite has four TPUs, draws about a kilowatt, and can only operate for 15 minutes at a time. Like's no-one's saying _that's_ impossible. Clearly. Pop a few gaming laptops on the ISS and you're in the same ballpark, except they'll operate continuously.
      2. logancbrown · · focus · HN ↗
        Are you moving the goalpost? There are other people in this thread right now that are stating exactly that running orbital GPUs in space will not physically be possible (heat limits, etc).
        1. kadoban · · focus · HN ↗
          Look at what they're doing. It runs for 15 minutes and then sleeps for an unstated amount of time (I'd guess hours to days).

          Literally nobody thought it would explode if you run it for even a nanosecond.

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