[HN Gopher] Starcloud says 1 launch, $8M but ISS tech says 17 la...
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Starcloud says 1 launch, $8M but ISS tech says 17 launches, $850M+
Author : angadh
Score : 32 points
Date : 2025-06-26 20:06 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (angadh.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (angadh.com)
| quantified wrote:
| And all of humanity will be watching these arrays orbit, for the
| financial benefit of whom? I'm happy to remember the wild night
| sky.
| xnx wrote:
| Starcloud isn't even worth the attention to point out what an
| infeasible idea it is.
| energywut wrote:
| Putting a datacenter in space is one of the worst ideas I've
| heard in a while.
|
| Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of
| batteries
|
| Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to?
|
| Latency? Highly variable.
|
| Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible.
|
| Radiation shielding? Not free.
|
| Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous!
|
| Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and
| keep them fueled.
|
| There's no upside, it's only downsides as far as I can tell.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Servers outside any legal jurisdiction. Priceless.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Given that most of the major powers have satellite shootdown
| ability this isn't worth all that much if you're causing
| enough trouble.
| FredPret wrote:
| Shooting down a satellite is a major step that creates a
| mess of space junk, angering everybody.
|
| Plus you can just have a couple of politicians from each
| major power park their money on that satellite.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Shooting down a satellite is a major step that creates a
| mess of space junk, angering everybody.
|
| unless everybody is angry at satellite in which case it
| is a price everybody is even eager to pay.
|
| >Plus you can just have a couple of politicians from each
| major power park their money on that satellite.
|
| I've long had the idea that there are fashions in
| corruption and a point at which to be corrupt just
| becomes too gauche and most politicians go back to being
| honest.
|
| This explains the highly variant history of extreme
| corruption in democracies.
|
| At any rate while the idea that the cure for any
| government interference is to be sufficiently corrupt
| sounds foolproof in theory I'm not sure it actually works
| out.
|
| If I was a major politician and you had my competitors
| park their money on your satellite it would become
| interesting for me to get rid of it. Indeed if you had me
| and my competitors on the satellite I might start
| thinking how do I conceal getting my money out of here
| and then wait for best moment to ram measure through to
| blow up satellite.
| FredPret wrote:
| By that logic, politicians around the world would make it
| illegal for themselves to trade stock on their insider
| knowledge. I'm not holding my breath.
|
| See: https://unusualwhales.com/politics. Some of these
| politicians on both sides are very good and consistent
| stock pickers indeed.
| notahacker wrote:
| The 'Principality of Sealand', anywhere else on the high seas
| or Antarctica have their issues with practicality too, but
| considerably less likelihood of background radiation flipping
| bits...
| psds2 wrote:
| Who would be willing to provide connectivity to servers that
| are exploiting being outside legal jurisdiction for some kind
| of value?
| edm0nd wrote:
| Dozens upon dozens of illicit shady bulletproof hosting
| providers.
|
| 2026, we will get ransomware from space!
|
| The RaaS groups have hundreds of millions of dollars so in
| theory they actually could get something like that setup if
| they wanted.
| ronsor wrote:
| > 2026, we will get ransomware from space!
|
| Ahem, _cloud_ ransomware.
| ronsor wrote:
| Anyone with a ground station aimed at the datacenter
| satellite.
| mandevil wrote:
| International space law (starting with the Outer Space Treaty
| of 1967) says that nations are responsible for all spacecraft
| they launch, no matter whether the government or a non-
| governmental group launches them. So a server farm launched
| by a Danish company is governed by Danish law just the same
| as if they were on the ground- and exposed to the same
| ability to put someone into jail if they don't comply with a
| legal warrant etc.
|
| This is true even if your company moves the actual launching
| to, say, a platform in international waters- you (either a
| corporation or an individual) are still regulated by your
| home country, and that country is responsible for your
| actions and has full enforcement rights over you. There is no
| area beyond legal control, space is not a magic "free from
| the government" area.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _nations are responsible for all spacecraft they launch, no
| matter whether the government or a non-governmental group
| launches them._
|
| Nations come and go. In my lifetime, the world map has
| changed dozens of times. Incorporate in a country that
| doesn't look like it's going to be around very long. More
| than likely, the people running it will be happy to take
| your money.
| christina97 wrote:
| Generally though, countries don't disappear: they have a
| predecessor and a successor.
| reaperducer wrote:
| A successor may take possession of the land, but that
| doesn't mean it will also take responsibility for the
| previous government's liabilities.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Those kinds of countries don't tend to be the kinds of
| countries with active space programs.
|
| And more critically - they have successor states.
|
| The Russian Federation is treated as the successor to the
| USSR in most cases (much to the chagrin of the rest of
| the CIS) and Serbia is treated as the successor to
| Yugoslavia (much to the chagrin of the rest)
| paxys wrote:
| Unless the company blasts its HQ and all its employees into
| space, no, they are very much subject to the jurisdiction of
| the countries they operate in. The physical location of the
| data center is irrelevant.
| peterbonney wrote:
| Exactly. Government entities have a funny habit of making
| their own decisions about what (and who) is and is not
| subject to their jurisdiction.
| notahacker wrote:
| The best argument I've heard for data centres in space startups
| is it's a excuse to do engineering work on components other
| space companies might want to buy (radiators, shielding, rad-
| hardened chips, data transfer, space batteries) which are too
| unsexy to attract the same level of FOMO investment...
| kolbe wrote:
| Re: reliable energy. Even in low earth orbit, isn't sunlight
| plentiful? My layman's guess says it's in direct sun 80-95% of
| the time, with deterministic shade.
| energywut wrote:
| Depends on your orbit, but you need to be prepared to rotate
| into Earth's shadow seamlessly.
| notahacker wrote:
| It's super reliable, provided you've got the stored energy
| for the reliable periods of downtime (or a sun synchronous
| orbit). Energy storage is a solved problem, but you need
| rather a lot of it for a datacentre and that's all mass which
| is very expensive to launch and to replace at the end of its
| usable lifetime. Same goes for most of the other problems
| brought up
| energywut wrote:
| Exactly this. It's not that it's a difficult problem, but
| it is a high mass-budget problem. Which makes it an
| expensive problem. Which makes it a difficult problem.
| malfist wrote:
| You answered it yourself, a sun synchronous orbit negates
| the need for large battery systems.
| paxys wrote:
| Bandwidth - negligible
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes cooling is difficult. Half the "solar panels" on the ISS
| aren't solar panels but heat radiation panels. That's the only
| way you can get rid of it and it's very inefficient so you need
| a huge surface.
| fsh wrote:
| I wonder if Starcloud is some kind of social experiment to figure
| out which is the dumbest possible idea that still somehow gets
| investors.
| SirFatty wrote:
| "...dumbest possible idea.."
|
| It's a crowded field, you have to do something to stand out!
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Solar roadways!
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Recently had a conversation of space based solar power pros and
| cons screech to a halt when someone said "Well what about space
| based geothermal?"
| Metacelsus wrote:
| maybe on Io :)
| ericyd wrote:
| This site is unusable on my mobile android phone, even tried
| multiple browsers. The body text extends beyond the window and I
| can't scroll or zoom to fit.
| v5v3 wrote:
| Same for me.
|
| But does work if I rotate phone to landscape mode.
| kemotep wrote:
| Here is a video that I think thoroughly covers the challenges a
| datacenter in orbit would face.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAcR7kqOb3o
| trhway wrote:
| My napkin is with Starcloud
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43190778 , ie. one Starship
| $10M launch - 10 000 GPU datacenter into LEO with energy and
| cooling. I missed there batteries for the half the time being in
| the Earth shadow, that adds 5Kg for 1 KWH, and thus it will get
| down to about 7000 GPU for the same weight and launch cost.
|
| Paradoxically the datacenter in LEO is cheaper than on the
| ground, and have bunch of other benefits like for example
| physical security.
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