[HN Gopher] Starcloud
___________________________________________________________________
Starcloud
https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf
Author : wiley1454
Score : 86 points
Date : 2025-05-13 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com)
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Dang that's very cool. As long as up and down bandwidth stay
| strong and reliable.
| alanfranz wrote:
| I doubt you need that much bandwidth or reliability. Training
| is "on site", you just need to upload training material once,
| then download the trained model.
| justanotheratom wrote:
| wow, one year back, I had made a prediction to a friend that this
| is the direction that Starlink will head in. I was thinking it
| would proceed like this:
|
| 1. provide internet. 2. provide CDN. 3. Edge Compute. 4. Full-on
| cloud.
|
| These guys see to be focussing on what is basically offline
| processing (AI training).
| thrance wrote:
| More like, these guys will be focused on parting VCs from their
| money.
|
| Datacenters in space makes no sense at all. Even ignoring the
| huge cost of sending hardware there in the first place, cooling
| is a massive issue in space. No medium to sink heat into means
| the only way to cool anything is by running water through giant
| infrared radiators. Not ideal when cooling is the largest
| bottleneck in scaling datacenters. Note that they would also
| have to dissipate the large amounts heat their datacenter
| satellite gets from being exposed to the Sun.
|
| Also disregard the cost it takes to send a technician for
| maintenance, of updating hardware, etc.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Also disregard the cost it takes to send a technician for
| maintenance, of updating hardware, etc.
|
| This won't happen. If a satellite fails they will just write
| it off. Maintenance would be more expensive than depreciation
| zamalek wrote:
| What does space give us that Earth does not in this scenario?
| Free real estate? They only mention falling costs for deployment.
| tux3 wrote:
| [flagged]
| xnx wrote:
| I do wonder about data centers in the arctic. Cut out the
| middle step of greenhouse gases and melt the polar caps
| directly.
| chewbacha wrote:
| Not to mention the benefit of directly harming extremely
| vulnerable ecosystems! Win-win
| btown wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Can you please make your substantive points thoughtfully,
| without snark or putdowns?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It is, to be fair, a shockingly incorrect claim in the
| context of vacuum.
| dang wrote:
| Can you please not post comments like this? Thoughtful
| criticism is welcome, of course, but this sort of thing
| isn't. Besides breaking the site guidelines, it takes threads
| in less interesting directions and evokes even worse comments
| from others. We're trying to avoid that here.
|
| " _Don 't be snarky._"
|
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us
| something._"
|
| " _Don 't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but
| please don't be rigidly or generically negative._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| tux3 wrote:
| Really, on second look, snark still feels justified here.
| The issue is with TFA. There is little room for a
| thoughtful comment in response to something transparent.
|
| Some type of submissions will invariably not result in very
| deep discussion, when the topic itself is so shallow.
| toraway wrote:
| Tbh your moderation is normally very restrained and even
| handed so was a bit surprising to see you take down several
| borderline overly snarky comments in a row (that just so
| happen to be directed against VC investors or YC founders).
| dilyevsky wrote:
| There's an answer in their whitepaper[0] - see Table 1. tl;dr -
| power is continuous and free via solar array
|
| [0] - https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Free in the sense of astronomical capital and operational
| costs.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| r&d sure, not sure about ops as you can probably just
| detach a faulty module and launch a replacement.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Relaunching is effectively operational cost.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Stationkeeping is not free, satellite monitoring is not
| free, and any replacement to any component is now a
| multi-year, at least 1+ million dollar affair (or most
| likely a complete replacement, since not many satellites
| have done in-situ repairs).
| GTP wrote:
| Not an expert in this area, but I think that that "just"
| is hiding a lot of complexity. Plus you also need some
| remotely operated robots to mount the replacement.
| cj wrote:
| > "We still don't appreciate the energy needs of this
| technology... there's no way to get there without a
| breakthrough... we need fusion or we need radically cheaper
| solar plus storage or something" -Sam Altman
|
| It's kind of depressing that the only way to make this tech
| better is to feed it more energy. (And apparently now to send
| it to space)
| jebarker wrote:
| It's also interesting that everyone is convinced the same
| capabilities can't be realized with drastically less
| compute.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Just spitballing here, but what if you built it on Earth, and
| then used the savings to build a second one on the opposite
| side of Earth? Now you have equivalently continuous power via
| solar array and also, as a bonus, air.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > power is continuous and free via solar array
|
| It's is on earth as well using solar and batteries. What is
| likely to get cheaper faster? Solar and batteries? Or lifting
| datacenters to space? The world is almost at the point of
| deploying 1TW/year of solar, and batteries are catching up.
| No space required.
| zamalek wrote:
| Power in needs to equal heat out, and that isn't easy in
| space. They, deceptively, claim that their novel solution is
| radiative cooling. Relying on radiation for cooling in space
| is the problem statement! Convective (as on Earth) is
| significantly more effective.
|
| I'm not one of those idiots who would claim that "we should
| focus on terrestrial problems instead of space," but this
| idea seems to have only downsides.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Isn't cooling already a major issue for spacecraft?
|
| The big radiators on the ISS can only dump a few server racks
| worth of heat.
| thekoma wrote:
| How does "passive cooling" work in space?
| donyccie wrote:
| Same question
| geuis wrote:
| Large radiators like on the ISS.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Contro...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| With an emphasis on _large_.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_thermal_control?wpr.
| ..
|
| > Most spacecraft radiators reject between 100 and 350 W of
| internally generated electronics waste heat per square meter.
| daeken wrote:
| Massive radiators. The ISS has radiators that have a
| dissipation capacity of about 3m^2/kW. If we use that number,
| we'd need a 3000m^2 radiator per megawatt, which is the scale
| they're talking about. This could theoretically be brought
| down, but not even by an order of magnitude.
|
| I wonder how much cooling the solar panels alone would need,
| when operating at that scale.
| echoangle wrote:
| The radiators on the ISS aren't passive though, they have
| actively pumped fluid loops to get heat from the hot parts
| into the radiators.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| That's interesting to know. But since it's space, how do
| they then cool down the hot fluid?
| Lanzaa wrote:
| Passive cooling refers to "passive radiative cooling"[0]. This
| is a well established technique, but I have doubts on how well
| it will scale with the heat generated by computation.
|
| Radiative cooling works by exploiting the fact that hot objects
| emit electromagnetic radiation (glow), and hot means everything
| above absolute zero. The glow carries away energy which cools
| down the object. One complication is that each glowy object is
| also going to be absorbing glow from other objects. While the
| sun, earth, and moon all emit large amounts of glow (again,
| heat radiation), empty space is around 2.7 Kelvin, which is
| very cold and has little glow. So the radiative coolers
| typically need to have line of sight to empty space, which
| allows them to emit more energy than they absorb.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_cooling
| hatthew wrote:
| Followup question, wouldn't nearly any cooling solution that
| works in space also work on the ground? Radiative cooling is
| the most basic/common cooling solution on the ground, the main
| challenge is just figuring out how to to move heat from the
| component to the radiator, which I don't think is solved by
| simply putting it in space?
| krisoft wrote:
| > Radiative cooling is the most basic/common cooling solution
| on the ground
|
| Thats tricky. I know the heat exchange components are called
| radiators but most of the heat they give off is by convection
| not radiation. (At least here on the ground.) I heard 80%-20%
| rule of thumb.
|
| But you are right in the broad strokes. Cooling is not easier
| in space. Mostly because you have no convective heat
| transfer.
| brador wrote:
| Solar Radiation and bitrot/damage, how you solving it? Whats your
| shielding stack?
| Havoc wrote:
| >passive cooling
|
| huh? I was under the impression that cooling in space is an
| absolute nightmare since radiating heat into vacuum is super
| hard?
|
| Even the comparatively small and decidedly H100-free ISS needed
| giant radiators
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Contro...
| thrance wrote:
| These two words are a massive red flags, signaling this is
| nothing more than a giant grift, like most of today's economy.
| znkynz wrote:
| Can't wait to experience a Gigawatt DC re-entering a la Cosmos
| 482.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Free hardware delivered to your doorstep!
| pauletienney wrote:
| Make something hard harder, just because
| arm32 wrote:
| It'll provide Earth more shade from that pesky sun!
| xnx wrote:
| Can this possibly make financial sense even if launch costs were
| zero?
|
| One NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD consumes 10 kW which would be ~500 square
| feet of solar panels and ~100 square feet of radiator area.
| transpute wrote:
| https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/companies/article/th...
|
| _> Their design calls for a cluster of shipping container-
| style boxes packed with high-speed AI chips. These would be
| anchored at the centre of a 16 sq km array of solar panels
| generating up to five gigawatts of power -- about 25 per cent
| more than Drax, Britain's biggest power station. The mammoth
| structure would circle the Earth in "sun synchronous" orbit so
| that it is never in shade_
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Their whitepaper clearly demonstrates a profound lack of
| knowledge of thermal engineering. E.g. heat pumps are
| described as magical things.
|
| They are literally planning to feed the radiators using a
| coolant like water and sensible heat at 35 degC to 5 degC. At
| 5 GW, you then need to be pumping 60 000 liters of water per
| second.
|
| That's like a tenth of the Sacramento river, going through a
| 16 sq km array in space and hoping that nothing leaks.
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| Even if they somehow figure out all these problems. how do you
| manage a space based data centre? do you have rotating staff
| living there? or are they just praying that nothing ever goes
| wrong??? Isn't radiation a massive problem in space? i would
| expect consumer grade hardware to be constantly flipping bits
| accidentally that shouldn't have flipped.
| divbzero wrote:
| I was wondering if these server racks in space would need to be
| specifically designed for enough radiative cooling. Apparently
| the answer is yes: the radiators would be expansive and placed on
| the reverse side of the solar panels.
|
| _Starcloud is developing a lightweight deployable radiator
| design with a very large area - by far the largest radiators
| deployed in space - radiating primarily towards deep space, which
| has an average temperature of about 2.7 Kelvin or -270degC. The
| radiators can be positioned in-line with the solar arrays as
| shown in Figure 3, with one side exposed to sunlight._
|
| _..._
|
| _Figure 3. A data center in Sun Synchronous Orbit, showing a 4km
| x 4km deployed solar array and radiators._
|
| https://www.starcloud.com/wp
| UberFly wrote:
| Most expensive IT call ever when you need to go fix that one
| fried power convertor that everyone said wouldn't fail.
| abetaha wrote:
| Definitely an out of this world idea. I wonder if their micro
| datacenter is going to be self-sufficient power wise using only
| solar energy? And how would they address the hardware failures
| that are likely when you train large language models at scale?
| 827a wrote:
| Given the purported cost benefits in their whitepaper [1],
| hardware failures might be an irrelevant rounding error. They
| suggest something to the tune of 100x cheaper.
|
| [1] https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf
| abetaha wrote:
| The white paper back of the envelope calculations show a 4km x
| 4km solar panels and radiators are required for a 5 GW
| datacenter. I am not sure how the authors were not cracking up
| while writing that white paper.
| babuloseo wrote:
| How I sniffed and stole training data and model data over the air
| to "Starcloud" posts gonna be crazy amount in abundance
| jedberg wrote:
| I've been saying for a long time that we should consider remote
| areas for building datacenters for batch processing.
|
| At first I thought the poles (of the planet) might be good. The
| cooling is basically free. But the energy and internet
| connectivity would be a problem. At the poles you can really only
| get solar about three months a year, and even then you need a lot
| of panels. Most of Antarctica is powered diesel because of this.
|
| So the next thought was space. At the time, launching to space
| was way too costly for it to ever make sense. But now, with much
| cheaper launches, space is accessible.
|
| Power seems easily solved. You can get lots of free energy from
| the sun with some modest panels. But to do that requires an odd
| orbit where you wouldn't be over the same spot on earth, which
| could make internet access difficult. Or you can go geostationary
| over a powerful ground station, but then you'd need some really
| big batteries for all the time you aren't in the sun.
|
| But cooling is a huge problem. Space is cold, but there is no
| medium to transfer the heat away from the hot objects. I think
| this will be the biggest sticking point, unless they came up with
| an innovative solution.
| pauletienney wrote:
| I have no clue about space technology but many comments point
| the difficulty to cool anything in space. If Starcloud had an
| innovative solution to this problem, why on Earth (sic) focus
| on data centers when they could help the entire space industry?
| It does not smell good.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| >But cooling is a huge problem. Space is cold, but there is no
| medium to transfer the heat away from the hot objects. I think
| this will be the biggest sticking point, unless they came up
| with an innovative solution.
|
| Their main tech breakthrough would have to be in this area
| otherwise the company is worthless imo.
| daeken wrote:
| It's possible to do all of this with current technology.
| Just... Why? The cost would be exorbitant; even with really
| clever deployment tech, the launch costs are gonna be
| dominated by solar panels and radiators.
|
| This is a super cool idea and seems like perfect investor-
| bait. That's about where it ends.
| handfuloflight wrote:
| Perhaps a hedge in case apocalyptic scenarios disable or
| reduce networks on the ground?
| jsheard wrote:
| Apocalyptic scenarios where terrestrial communication
| methods going back over a century are no longer feasible,
| but we can still readily talk to _space?_ And maintain
| /replace the stuff we have up there?
| arp242 wrote:
| Yes, because in an apocalyptic scenario what we all will
| be clamouring will be space data centres training AI and
| mining bitcoin.
| matt-p wrote:
| Genuinely most "AI" DCs are spending less than 9KW on
| cooling for every 100KW of servers. If you were that
| bothered about getting that to zero, you could literally
| sink them into the ocean, build a heat network so the town
| can take the heat for free or use any of a dozen more
| established and practical ways to do that.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Please don't suggest heating the ocean! Someone might
| just go to try to do that. The ocean is already warming
| too much!
| thrance wrote:
| I don't think they can bend the laws of physics though.
| Vacuum means the only way to dissipate heat is through
| thermal radiation, hence the huge infrared radiators.
| vasco wrote:
| > But to do that requires an odd orbit where you wouldn't be
| over the same spot on earth, which could make internet access
| difficult
|
| Routing through starlink should have direct LoS at all times.
| jsheard wrote:
| Whether Starlink can keep up with the bandwidth demands of
| orbital datacenters is another question though.
|
| (probably not)
| dfabulich wrote:
| Their whitepaper explains their cooling "solution":
| https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf
|
| > _As conduction and convection to the environment are not
| available in space, this means the data center will require
| radiators capable of radiatively dissipating gigawatts of
| thermal load. To achieve this, Starcloud is developing a
| lightweight deployable radiator design with a very large area -
| by far the largest radiators deployed in space - radiating
| primarily towards deep space_...
|
| They claim they can radiate "633.08 W / m^2". At that rate,
| they're looking at square _kilometers_ of radiators to
| dissipate gigawatts of thermal load, perhaps _hectares_ of
| radiators.
|
| They also claim that they can "dramatically increase" heat
| dissipation with heat pumps.
|
| So, there you have it: "all you have to do" is deploy a few
| hectares of radiators in space, combined with heat pumps that
| can dissipate gigawatts of thermal load with no maintenance at
| all over a lifetime of decades.
|
| This seems like the sort of "not technically _impossible_ "
| problem that can attract a large amount of VC funding, as VCs
| buy lottery tickets that the problem can be solved.
| mrj wrote:
| An object of that size in orbit seems like it'd run into
| problems developing sizable holes due to space junk and
| whathaveyou. There's probably _some_ maintenance...
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I don't get it--are the founders just grifters? How did this
| startup even make it off the drawing board?
| foobiekr wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| That crosses into personal attack, which is not allowed
| on HN, so please don't.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Probably because space companies will invest in you to feed
| their bubble.
|
| You have to find trillions of dollars of future launches to
| justify current valuations.
| erulabs wrote:
| a 1% chance of making a billion dollars is worth 1 million
| dollars.
| mjcohen wrote:
| 10 million
| jrflowers wrote:
| It's only a grift if they know they can't solve the cooling
| issue _and_ they falsify data around their proposed
| solution _and_ they publicly embarrass their investors a la
| Theranos.
|
| Outside of that, accepting money and saying "I will simply
| solve the enormous problem with my idea by solving it" is
| not only normal, but actively encouraged and rewarded in
| the VC sphere. Suggesting that that way of operating is
| anything short of the standard that should be aspired to is
| actually seen as derisive and offensive on here and can get
| you labeled as gauche or combative.
| sfink wrote:
| Or we could build a large vacuum chamber here on Earth and
| put a data center in it, if the goal is to make cooling as
| difficult as possible. "My data center is too hot! It's
| burning me!" "Put it in a giant thermos, then you won't feel
| it anymore."
|
| > They also claim that they can "dramatically increase" heat
| dissipation with heat pumps.
|
| Right, great idea. Start with the heat where you don't want
| it -- in the chip -- and pump it out to where it can't go
| anywhere. Then you can recirculate the medium back and have
| slightly older heat that you can mix with the new heat! It'll
| be a heat party!
|
| It's just like a terrestrial heat pump, where you pump the
| heat out to where you have a huge environmental sink to
| transfer the heat to. In space, you have something like a
| hundred thousand hydrogen atoms per cubic meter to take up
| the heat. A HUNDRED THOUSAND! That's a bigly number, it must
| work out. We can always make those atoms go really, really
| fast!
|
| Did an AI invent this whole scheme?
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| Obviously use the heat pumps to concentrate the thermal
| energy up to 2700k, then conduct it along a bunch of tungsten
| filaments, now it's the world's biggest incandescent
| lightbulb on top of being the first datacenter in space.
| Maybe get it up to 4000k for a more modern lighting look.
| Guess we're gonna assume the dark forest hypothesis is false.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Could they concentrate the energy and beam it down to earth
| as a source for electricity generation on the ground?
| stephenhandley wrote:
| I was trying to put these sizes in rough perspective. ISS is
| the largest man-made object in space, which is basically the
| size of a football field (half a hectare) and cost $150B.
| https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/comparison-of-size-of-
| int...
|
| The whitepaper shows a 4km x 4km solar array, which is 1600
| hectares (3200 International Space Stations). Would assume
| the array they're proposing would be cheaper since its
| structurally more homogenous, but $480 trillion dollars is a
| whole lot of money.
| dijit wrote:
| > I've been saying for a long time that we should consider
| remote areas for building datacenters for batch processing.
|
| FWIW there's a reason that Sweden has a bunch of datacenters in
| the north that are peanuts compared to hosting in Virginia.
|
| They're "poorly" connected (by virtue of being a bit out of the
| way), but the free cooling and power from renewables make them
| extremely attractive. There was a time where they were the
| favourite of crypto-miners for the same reason as they would be
| attractive to AI training farms.
|
| Fortlax has some I believe; https://www.fortlax.se
|
| -----
|
| As for the meat of the paper. Anyone with a passing
| understanding of space will be quick to point out that:
|
| A) Heat is a _problem_ in space, it 's either way-way-way to
| hot (IE; you're in the path of the Sun) or it's way-way-way too
| cold (IE; you're out of the sun) and the shift between the two
| means you need to build for both. You also can't dissipate heat
| as there's no air to take the heat away.
|
| B) Power is not so abundant and solar panels degrade; a huge
| amount of satellite building is essentially managing a decline
| in the capability of hardware. That's part of why there are so
| many up there.
|
| C) Getting reasonably sized hardware up there is beyond
| improbable, though I'll grant you that most of the weight in a
| computer is the cooling components and chassis.
|
| D) Cosmic Rays. No electromagnetic barrier from earth _and_
| extremely tight lithographies. I mean... there 's a reason NASA
| is still using CPU's measured in the _megahertz_ range.
| ziofill wrote:
| Perhaps I'm missing something, but if the only energy they get
| is coming from the sun, then they only need to dissipate that
| same amount of heat (minus whatever energy was needed for
| beaming data down to Earth).
| bongodongobob wrote:
| What you're missing is that you'd have a huge solar array
| that powers something much smaller, so that energy gets
| concentrated into a small area.
| gbear605 wrote:
| That's not how it works. With conservation of energy, all
| the energy coming in to power the computers has to be
| emitted somehow. Powering computers doesn't get rid of the
| energy, it just makes it unusable and converts it into
| heat.
| 38 wrote:
| > At first I thought the poles (of the planet) might be good.
| The cooling is basically free.
|
| Yes, let's go ahead and finish melting the ice caps, great idea
| vanilla wrote:
| space debris, radiation and no maintenance. The buzzwords sure
| sound cool, but make absolutely no sense.
| jsheard wrote:
| Aside from the obvious cooling issues people have already
| mentioned, isn't cosmic radiation also very unkind to modern
| ultra dense silicon? AIUI they tend to use really old silicon
| processes in space stuff for that reason, and even then they have
| to build in redundant compute to mitigate logic errors that
| probably wouldn't happen on Earth.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > They tend to use really old silicon processes in space stuff
| for that reason.
|
| To be fair that's mostly part "if it works don't change it" and
| part "that's how we've always done it". SpX uses newer hardware
| w/ traditional OSs (linux) w/ lots of redundancy.
| megiddo wrote:
| This. Had to deal with cosmic rays on earth in data centers 20
| years ago.
|
| I can't imagine running bleeding edge GPUs in a particle
| accelerator and getting reasonable results.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Does SpaceX also use old silicon for Starlink and other
| projects?
| jsheard wrote:
| I believe they use relatively modern silicon, but the nature
| of a constellation gives them a lot of wiggle room to route
| around failures.
| devops000 wrote:
| When I read something like this I fell that I am wasting my time
| working on a B2B SaaS.
| Townley wrote:
| It sounds like their vision for space-based data centers
| presupposes nearly-free energy costs, delivered via a colossal
| solar farm made possible by falling launch costs.
|
| Temporarily putting aside (extremely fair) feasibility questions
| around those two pre-requisites, data centers are a not-bad
| choice for things to do with unlimited space energy.
|
| Aluminum smelting or growing food are the two I'd think of
| otherwise, and neither of those can have inputs/outputs beamed to
| a global network of high-bandwidth satellites.
| gbear605 wrote:
| Solar energy isn't that much more efficient in Earth orbit than
| on Earth - maybe twice as efficient. That sounds nice, but
| you're saving half of your solar panel cost while massively
| increasing every other cost.
| mark242 wrote:
| And what happens to these datacenters when the underlying GPU
| tech becomes obsolete within 2-3 years?
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I would imagine you could launch a new rack, dump the old one,
| and connect the new one to the existing solar / cooling array.
| Hopefully with some sort of re-entry and recycling plan for the
| old one. The sheer size the arrays are going to need to be feel
| like they are going to be the more important part of it.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| Unless they've figured out some impressive cooling tech, which I
| would expect would be worth more than the rest of their company
| combined, then this is pretty much DoA. "More efficient cooling
| architecture taking advantage of higher DT in space" would indeed
| be useful if you had a nice medium to radiate into. It turns out
| that thermal radiation is incredibly poor into the vacuum of
| space lol.
| amluto wrote:
| Space (with a sunshade) is a nearly perfect medium into which
| to radiate heat, in the sense that there's nothing better.
|
| But I agree with your general point. At 100degC, you can
| radiate about 1kW/m^2. That's 1000m^2 of radiator per MW of
| datacenter, assuming you can operate with the radiator at
| 100degC. You can fudge this a bit with a heat pump (to run the
| radiator hotter, paying a linear-ish power penalty and gaining
| a fourth-power radiation benefit), but that's expensive and
| that power isn't free.
|
| Here on Earth, you can cool by conduction or evaporation, which
| isn't an option in space.
| shantara wrote:
| Scott Manley has published a video a few months ago explaining
| why putting data centers in space is an absolutely terrible idea.
| Lumen Orbit, the company mentioned, is a former name of
| Starcloud.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-YcVLq98Ew
| serjester wrote:
| Very ambitious but it seems futile if you're not building the
| rockets yourself. Personally I'm more bullish on figuring out how
| to use analog chips to train models.
| ianhowson wrote:
| I had a good laugh.
|
| - You can't build 40MW of solar panels for $2M, even with
| theoretical maximum efficiency. You can't even build the cabling
| and regulators at that price.
|
| - You need battery storage -- not as your backup -- but as
| primary source. It is going to cost more than $2M. Batteries are
| heavy. They are going to cost a lot to launch. This is not even
| solved on the ground yet.
|
| - You need a heat transport medium to move heat into your massive
| radiator. Either you use water or you use air or you use
| heatpipes (metal). You have to pay for the cost and weight and
| launch expense. This is probably half the weight of the rack and
| I haven't bothered to do the math about how you transport heat
| into a 500 foot solar sail.
|
| - Let's not even talk about how you need to colocate multiple
| other racks for compute and storage. There aren't any 1TBps
| orbital link technologies.
|
| - Rad shielding? It doesn't work, but I'll let this slide; it
| seems like the least problematic part of the proposal.
|
| - 15 year lifetime? GPUs are obsolete after 12 months.
|
| I don't want to be the guy who shoots stuff down just for fun,
| but this doesn't even pass the sniff test. Maybe you can get 10x
| cheaper power and cooling in space. Still doesn't work.
| postalrat wrote:
| Where do I buy some of these 12 month old obsolete GPUs?
| amluto wrote:
| Also: repairs. Every time I read someone's story about large-
| scale ML training, a bunch of it is about identifying failing
| or flaky equipment and fixing it. That's not so easy in space.
| rozap wrote:
| Either this is performance art, or interest rates are too low.
| ekianjo wrote:
| GPUs are not obsolete after 12 months. Look at how Nvidia is
| stagnating for their 50 series lineup.
|
| The biggest problem is software. The CUDA stack is not
| maintained forever and certainly less than 15 years.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| Good point, Rad shielding ... how even trust your calculations
| when everything is grilled by charged particles.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Most comments on this page are about the problem with heat.
| You're saying the problem is battery storage.
|
| ... couldn't you just merge both problems into a solution -
| your radiators ARE you power source
| dang wrote:
| Their whitepaper (https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf) had a
| thread last fall:
|
| _We should train AI in space [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41478241 - Sept 2024 (93
| comments)
|
| A bit more here:
|
| _Lumen Orbit_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42790424 -
| Jan 2025 (2 comments)
|
| _VCs wanted to get into Lumen Orbit 's $11M seed round_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42518284 - Dec 2024 (2
| comments)
| MattSteelblade wrote:
| This doesn't pass the sniff test. Please, show me the napkin math
| where this remotely adds up.
| niek_pas wrote:
| I miss when tech was exciting
| thrance wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Ok, but could you please follow HN's guidelines when posting
| here (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? They
| include:
|
| " _Please don 't fulminate._"
|
| " _Don 't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but
| please don't be rigidly or generically negative._"
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| is this a joke? isn't cooling in space a really big problem? how
| does it make sense to run a data centre with huge cooling
| requirements in a place where cooling is very difficult to
| accomplish?
| entangledqubit wrote:
| Microsoft had/has the Natick project which was an undersea data
| center testbed which allegedly had a bunch of benefits. That
| doesn't seem to have gone anywhere - or at least isn't really
| scaling up. I'd imagine the ongoing operational costs of space
| are worse than the ocean?
|
| To me, the cost estimates seem a bit off and conflate capital
| with running costs.
|
| The main benefit for space at the moment seems to be sidestepping
| terrestrial regulations.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| Suggest changing the elevator pitch text - it's never going to
| make sense to train a frontier model in space. In our lifetime at
| least.
| varunneal wrote:
| I'll take the long side on that bet
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I'm not an engineer, so maybe I'm wrong, but isn't cooling
| famously difficult in space?
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Does abundant cooling in space mean there's a better way to
| radiate away heat than on Earth or just that the heat doesn't
| contribute to heating up Earth or something more complicated?
| (Asking because I thought cooling was a big problem in space.)
| settsu wrote:
| I guess since we decided Idiocracy was aspirational, why not
| Wall-E as well.
|
| /s (kinda but maybe not really...)
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| These venture capital scams are getting more and more creative...
| arp242 wrote:
| Reading the paper this sounds like space Theranos. If they start
| producing results then I'd double check to make sure it's not
| just calculated on regular data centres and that they're just
| pretending its from their space stations.
|
| Aside from the technical concerns already raised in other
| comments, I'm also not sure we really want all this private for-
| profit usage of earth's orbit. The orbital environment is already
| somewhat congested and people have already been raising concerns
| about it. There is the potential for it all to spectacularly blow
| up in our faces and become so polluted that we won't be able to
| do many launches at all.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Private use of previous public resources has had mixed success,
| but it feels like leaving space to the public sector will doom
| us to being Terran bound forever.
| aunetx wrote:
| I don't see the problem in that to be honest... Especially if
| the other solution would be allowing private companies to
| take over our (shared) orbit, meteorites, and -- continuing
| the trend -- planets for themselves to profit. If it seems
| overly pessimistic, we can just look at how our own planet's
| ressources are shared...
| arp242 wrote:
| I don't know what the best solution is to be honest, but a
| wild west where improbable VC-funded nonsense is launched
| isn't it. Leaving it only to the public sector is the other
| extreme end of course.
| echoangle wrote:
| I'm still not sure how people can believe this, this makes zero
| sense to me.
|
| There is no easy passive cooling in space, getting rid of heat is
| a major problem. And you need more redundancy because the
| radiation will crash your computers. And launch is very expensive
| of course.
|
| And the whole presentation is completely ludicrous. Look at table
| 1 in the linked PDF and tell me you're serious. There is no
| additional cost when sending a datacenter to space except launch
| cost and shielding? Building a server farm on earth is the same
| price as building a satellite you can launch on a rocket as long
| as you use the same computers?
| slashdev wrote:
| I agree, this is makes no sense at all.
|
| Can I take the other side of this investment? Like an angel
| funding round, but selling short?
| debatem1 wrote:
| If you figure out how to do this I will invest in your fund.
| esperent wrote:
| > There is no easy passive cooling in space, getting rid of
| heat is a major problem
|
| Nonetheless getting rid of heat (by radiation) _is_ possible,
| otherwise people would be roasted inside the ISS.
|
| I'm sure all of these companies are advertising "ChatGPT in
| Space!" because that's what will generate hype and money, but
| what they'll actually be planning is very small edge data
| centers whose job is to reduce latency.
|
| Whether that makes financial sense, I have no idea. But I am
| sure it's at least physically possible for a small enough data
| center.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| I got to the comma in the first sentence from the webpage and
| immediately went to the comments because I had the exact same
| thought.
|
| Given Y Combinator's vetting process, I'm sure they would have
| tackled this problem somehow - maybe by feeding the heat into
| another process? It will be interesting to see how they've
| solved this.
| vermilingua wrote:
| > Given Y Combinator's vetting process...
|
| The vetting process of the fund that quite famously invests
| in the founders over the idea?
| amelius wrote:
| Read the "Thermal Management" section, page 8 ...
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| How do they plan on addressing the solar radiation issue? What is
| the solar flare risk?
|
| A CDN for Starlink customers is probably the first use case for
| servers in space, not training GPT6, which will be a big enough
| project on familiar territory.
| ryandamm wrote:
| Cooling in space was covered by XKCD's Randall Munroe in pretty
| entertaining detail here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsUBRd1O2dU
|
| TL;DR... cooling in space isn't passive, you're on the "inside"
| of an enormous vacuum flask. And radiative coupling with space is
| possible from the ground, if that's what you're interested in:
|
| https://www.skycoolsystems.com
|
| But god bless crazy entrepreneurs. Don't ask whether we can,
| definitely don't ask if we should, just ask whether it makes for
| good headlines...
| floathub wrote:
| Canadian north makes sense (very cheap electricity, ridiculously
| easy heat management).
|
| Space? I really don't get it.
| crispinb wrote:
| Ycombinator has one legitimate function: dissipating excess
| looted wealth.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| I think calling this a solution in search of a problem would be
| too generous. This is a solution in search of a solution.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| This has to be one of the dumbest ideas I've seen posted here.
|
| Just think about the sheer effort required to dump 1 BILLION
| watts of waste heat into space - the engineering challenges alone
| make this completely impractical.
|
| Compared to this, Theranos actually looks like a solid
| investment. At least Holmes had working demos and big-name
| backers before it all fell apart. This doesn't even pass the
| basic smell test.
| ryandamm wrote:
| All these comments are acting like this is a major problem with
| VCs in general.
|
| Is this not a major problem with YC, specifically? Our beloved
| orange site funded and accelerated these guys.
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