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Comment by Rover222 | Hacker News Reader

Reading the comments here again surprises me how in an anti-Elon bubble most folks are. They are renting out spare Colossus 1 capacity. Colossus 2 is still coming online. Orbital data centers are really the plan in the next few years. XAi is still behind, but not a disaster considering how late they entered (and Elon’s unfortunate fixation on anime characters).

SpaceX is extremely uniquely positioned to crush the rest of the world combined in order to orbital data centers.

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> SpaceX is extremely uniquely positioned to crush the rest of the world combined in order to orbital data centers

Sure, as long as your data center is 3x4m - size of a Starlink satellite (think Spinal Tap Stone Henge) . Anything bigger than that (i.e. actual data center sized) is going to require some assembly.

I've heard TeslaBot is good at folding shirts, and serving drinks (at least while teleoperated) - perhaps it can help?

Orbital DCs is blocked on starship because they _arent_ doing starlink sized satellites.

You're not going to fit a data center in a Starship either, unless you are talking a Tiny Corp Exabox "data center in a shipping container" sized one. Even something that small (1MW) would still need 4x the solar capacity of the ISS, and therefore likely some assembly required. Then you've got latency from satellite to satellite ...

In any case, it appears that Musk can't even generate enough AI demand to utilize his own ground based data center. Maybe he can add "data centers in space" to part of his Mars colonization plan. Maybe have Tesla Bots driving around in Cybertrucks too ?

Okay well you’re clearly not understanding the basic concept of the orbital architecture.

AFAIK "orbital data centers" are a bunch of nonsense.

1. GPUs create heat. There's no efficient way to get rid of the heat in space (vacuum is an insulator). 2. Die-shrink makes modern processors and memory more and more susceptible to radiation; shielding is possible, but adds cost + mass (which adds cost)

I struggle to understand how orbital data centers can make sense. Is it mainly for continuous solar energy? Surely this can't be enough to offset the costs of launching?

See the recent Dwarkesh interview with Elon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYXbuik3dgA

Continuous 5x solar power (relative to on earth), no earthbound construction red tape or protestors, and yeah it can only possibly pencil out with Starship launching routinely. No other rocket system could even come close to making it work.

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