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Building data centers in space has to be the stupidest shit I've ever read (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/general@lemmy.world
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I think we have an obligation to halt any development of data centers in space. While climate change is set to destroy our future, we can't afford to be focused on that bullshit.

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[–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Cause, none of these solutions you talk about are viable enough.

You talk about harvesting hydrogen from deep space. Good luck with that. Molten salt radiator is a horrible idea when temperature regulation is itself the problem.

I don't wanna sound rude, but I don't think you have an engineering background. Air pressure in near Earth orbit is nearly 10^-13 atmos, and deeper into space is calculated in atoms per square meter. How do you think we're to ever extract hydrogen from this low pressure? It's not possible. And by not possible I mean too tedious of a work for too little hydrogen.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (2 children)

    You're right.

    You know what else is really fuckin' stupid? Thinking that carving up rocks can make them do basic logical operations. I mean yeah like in theory you could, but you're gonna have to chisel them for years. Plus, the resulting rocks would be massive, because it's frankly impossible to make a chisel nanometers across and then still use it. What do you mean you're gonna carve rocks with light? That's even stupider. Light can't carve rocks.

    The microprocessor in whatever device you used to write that is simply not viable enough to even try.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    Sure, go ahead and use an example of a technology that had more than 70 years of research and development gone behind it. And 70 years only for the silicon based transistors. If you actually count all the mathematical foundation that helped us make computers you're talking about atleast a century of innovation that made modern computer what it is today.

    If you went back in 1970s and told them to start working on Instagram or Facebook, no one will take you seriously. Modern TCP protocols weren't made till 1980s.

    Similarly, there's no technology we currently have that'll support data enters in space. Solar panels? Kilometers large array to support anything equivalent of a modern datacenter on earth. Cooling? I've seen no decent solution for that either. Molten salt is a horrible solution cause keeping salts liquid will alone increase the temperature and energy requirements. Cluster of smaller satellites? Good luck with traffic management.

    Also each calculation needs to be run atleast 3 times in space because of high energy particles bit flipping. So already a space data center will cost 3x more energy to run.

    Sorry, I don't see a good enough reason to put data centers in space.

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