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Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

I've talked to the founder of Starcloud about this, there is just going to be a lot of data generative stuff in space in the future, and further and further out into space. He thinks now is the right time to learn how to compute up there because people will want to process, and maybe orchestrate processing between many devices, in space. He's fully aware of all of the objections in this hn comments section, he just doesn't believe they are insurmountable and he believes interoperable compute hubs in space will be required over the next 20/30 years. He's in his mid 20s, so it seems like a reasonable mission to be on to me.

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Seems far more likely that the "data generative stuff" will get smaller and cheaper to run (like cell phones with on-device models) much faster than "run a giant supercomputer in orbit" will become easy.

My headlights aren't good enough so I'm unsure but generally that maps. To me the interoperability part is what is interesting, your data and my data in real time being consumed by some understanding agent doing automated research? I could imagine putting something like a Stoffel MPC layer in there, then nations states can more easily work together? I presume space data/research will be highly competitive, even friendly nations may want to combine data without knowing the underneath. We're so far out here that it's kinda silly, but I don't think we're out to lunch? Have a great weekend Chris! :)

There are certainly nation states that are looking for ways to 1) prevent their satellites colliding with one another (https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/850.pdf) and 2) being able to do forms of computation that might be risky to do on earth for national security reasons.

> forms of computation that might be risky to do on earth for national security reasons

Such as...?

Earth is the closest spot for most of space. It makes most sense for satellites to send data back to Earth. They would have to find a use where with lots of compute but latency really matters.

For farther out, computer on ships, stations, or bases makes sense, but that is different than free floating satellites. They already have power, cooling, and maintenance.

It is like saying there should be compute in the air for all the airplanes flying around.

> there is just going to be a lot of data generative stuff in space in the future

Why?

Because near all analysts have it on somewhere between a 5% and 7% CAGR.

That didn't answer the question but just repeat the original claim differently. Where are they getting those numbers?

The Forrester report I'm using to invest in this stuff, I've read some Gartner on it also.

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