But if the project fails, then the view of the world is proved correct again, which feels moderately pleasant.
No one is saying it’s impossible to put operating GPUs in space. People are saying that the economics of this make zero sense, and there seem to be hard physical limits for how much you can change parts of the reasons why. This test does absolutely nothing to disprove that.
Economics are another matter.
Literally nobody thought it would explode if you run it for even a nanosecond.
>... but here we are, they are flying them up to space and presumably, will start working soon.
No, this isn't "here we are". This is not an orbital data center, this is just something that will test TPU cooling functionality in orbit for only 15 minutes at a time.
And ah, I see you’ve been dancing around with definitions and goomba fallacies around this thread. You definitely asked your question in good faith.
It's more like blockchain than LLM: there's no clear value proposition and you have to squint really hard to see any perceived benefit.
Yeah, no, sorry, this is not a datacenter.
So why do it? Because datacenter regulations on earth are becoming a referendum by proxy on AI. "Texas has no jurisdiction in low earth orbit!" is the general idea. Critics point out that this is a transparent move to moot the argument over AI, and that it doesn't even work in principle, due to above mentioned physics.
I haven't commented on this topic before (here or elsewhere) but I don't understand your surprise at people being critical. Everyone has a vested interest in keeping the planet usable. We could try lots of things in space, like agriculture or power production. It takes a lot of fuel to push a usable kilogram of stuff into a low orbit (laser propulsion and spin launches aren't quite there yet), so moving operations into orbit has various major downsides. So long as nobody states an upside, yeah, my mind is quite blown about wasting investor money on this. Even when not considering the opportunity cost of that used money (alternative positive uses), it seems like burning the equivalent amount of cash in a bonfire or otherwise disappearing the money would be a lesser evil
- people getting nerd sniped and explaining why it’s wrong
- people who assume it isn’t wrong given the level of competence these groups have demonstrated already and are incensed by what they feel are bald faced lies to pump up stock prices like has been done before
- people who think this is some conspiracy(rightly or wrongly) to surreptitiously get weapon platforms or other support for weapon platforms into space.
The majority of tradeoffs for data centers make them always better on the ground. Just due to maintenance and heat alone.
> There are many people on HN that despise it and say it will not and will never work, but here we are, they are flying them up to space and presumably, will start working soon.
This is the one Google says they can run in 15 minute bursts and I’ve yet to find where they document what the cooldown period is before they can run again.
Also 99% of people saying it’ll never work are talking economically, not that theoretically you could get something up that works in the laws of physics.
In the extremely unlikely situation that you weren’t, and so the mods can see I engaged with the question.
I personally am against for economic reasons and feel like point 2 laid out by me is the most likely, although there is another option I could entertain where the people running these companies are so high on their own supply with the TESCREAL beliefs, or literally high like we’ve seen guys like Musk be in public, that they actually believe in this being economically plausible despite all contrary evidence.
From the article:
> Google will run Gemini models on the TPUs for testing, but they won’t be able to run continuously. The cooling system will only be able to operate in brief spurts of about 15 minutes. After that, the TPUs need to shut down to allow the radiators to catch up.
I mean, ah, define 'working'.
To me it's clear the U.S. is heading for a default. Instead of toning down the deficit Trump made it much worse with his "Big Beautiful Bill" and is bankrupting the country.
What happens next is anyone's guess, but it won't be pretty.
Look at the article: they threw 4 cards in a box and launched it. It works for 15 minutes and then it has to snooze for who-knows-how-long.
The economics of mass production of satellites has been demonstrated to work out just fine (see Starlink) and what's missing is the same shift when it comes to space launches. Now I'm not saying that this is going to happen, but that's what the whole purpose of Musk's Starship/Superheavy rocket is.
If - and that's a big if! - the whole Starship concept works out, it'd drastically change the economics of putting satellites in LEO and the whole idea instantly becomes much less stupid.
So basically it's a bet on Starship working as advertised in the very near future. If it does, data centres in space (e.g. in the form of laser-linked satellite swarms) become a compelling alternative to terrestrial data centres. No regulatory issues, no infrastructure problems (power, water, ...), no risk of sabotage or drone strikes (see AWS in Middle East), and no land leases required.
Once you add up all these risks and costs and put them next to the launch cost that SpaceX envisions for Starship, the concept suddenly sounds quite plausible.
I'm sceptical myself - though for very different reasons - but I wouldn't call it an outright scam. It all hinges on one thing: Starship has to work. Cheaply, reliably, and within the next couple of years. If it turns out to be less capable, significantly more expensive, less reliable than F9 and F9 Heavy, or not ready until the mid-2030s, the concept is dead.
First of all, orbital data centre doesn't mean a monolithic 500MW monstrosity orbiting Earth. That's not what the companies actually investigating the idea (Google, Amazon, SpaceX, ...) have in mind.
The real-world implementation would use constellations of Starlink-sized satellites, so we're talking about a ~10kW power envelope. Under ideal orbital conditions (sun synchronous near polar orbit, ~250-450km), you can get away with as little as 40m² of radiator area depending on engineering margins, provided you allow your radiator/coolant temps to be 70°C and above (70°C is what I used for my estimation plus an ideal 400km SSO and a reasonably efficient radiator similar to the improved ETCS on the ISS - no ammonia for the coolant, though see below as to why).
People often cite the ISS and its ~100m² radiators for comparison. The problem with that is that for one, the design operating temperature of the ISS' EATCS is 4°C on the low temp loop and 17°C on the moderate temp loop. That little known fact aside, the current improved ATCS is capable of rejecting 70kW of waste heat - way more than the thermal output a realistic satellite would produce. The active temperature control system (ATCS) of the ISS is designed around humans and science experiments in a 400km 52°N to 52°S orbit, not silicon chips that are allowed to run much hotter than 25°C and sit in SSO.
In short the *actual* thermodynamics work out just fine if you consider real satellite designs instead of sci-fi monstrosities, use realistic operating temperatures for the coolant loop designed around silicon chips, and the desired target orbit.
So when you say "unless we learn how to change those rules the problem will be unsolvable" I'd honestly like to know why my 25+ year old literature on satellite mission and hardware design, Boeing's numbers from "Active Thermal Control System (ATCS) Overview" document, the formulas from NASAs "Guidelines for thermal analysis of spacecraft hardware", this gem from DLR https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2024.11.024 and my calculator are all wrong at the same time.
Sure, I only did some napkin math (still took nearly 45min) using some simplified formulas and crude estimates for the required parameters (I was curious, but not THAT curious), but I always rounded up and used a healthy 2x margin on top of the estimated result.
So please tell me why I'm wrong.