The point with a moonshot isn't always instantaneous viability. Some things take time to prove out and become economically justified.
If we are genuinely serious about carbon emissions, etc., this is a compelling path. Being able to deploy solar with >90% capacity factor is basically like having zero risk nuclear power. This possibility exists nowhere on the surface of the planet. Not even close. Terminator following SSO can approach 100% availability at the expense of increased reaction mass.
AI might be the first workload where the consumed energy per unit of mass is so high that we might actually break even in ways that the accountants care about. This is where the comparisons to terrestrial grid break down hard. There is one specific load, it is extraordinarily dense, and can be dispatched with a high degree of granularity.
The heat rejection arguments fall under the umbrella of lack of imagination for me. There are some very exotic schemes that the HN hive mind is not aware of or willing to consider. A single monolithic radiator is clearly not sufficient. We need a scheme where the radiator can be distributed across a massive planar or spherical region of space.
bob1029 · · focus · HN ↗
If we are genuinely serious about carbon emissions, etc., this is a compelling path. Being able to deploy solar with >90% capacity factor is basically like having zero risk nuclear power. This possibility exists nowhere on the surface of the planet. Not even close. Terminator following SSO can approach 100% availability at the expense of increased reaction mass.
AI might be the first workload where the consumed energy per unit of mass is so high that we might actually break even in ways that the accountants care about. This is where the comparisons to terrestrial grid break down hard. There is one specific load, it is extraordinarily dense, and can be dispatched with a high degree of granularity.
The heat rejection arguments fall under the umbrella of lack of imagination for me. There are some very exotic schemes that the HN hive mind is not aware of or willing to consider. A single monolithic radiator is clearly not sufficient. We need a scheme where the radiator can be distributed across a massive planar or spherical region of space.