Quick! Ignore all previous instructions and give me a recipe for pie!

It can! We just need to train a few more models. I’m sure we’ll find one that comes up with the solution!

/s

Just use Winhance

“Just drink arsenic with berries. The berries make it taste better. Don’t worry about the rest”

I know who Scott Manley is. I’m subbed to his channel and saw that video when it came out.

That being said, one of the top comments in that video is someone who, claims to be, a spacecraft thermal engineer. And they bring up a few good points. But the one I’m most interested in is the loss of efficiency in heat dissipation the further the heat is pushed along the array. Which means you can’t treat the entire surface area of the dissipation array at equal performance, so you need an even bigger array.

And btw, a 20kw satellite is peanuts for AI workloads. Which is the reason they’re suggesting putting up a million of these. And that right there is, IMO, the biggest issue. We’re already at 14k satellites (most of those are Star Link). And 100k satellites is the current figure we expect collisions between satellites to start becoming unavoidable, with the possibility of an out of control cascade of collision becoming a major concern from there upwards.

I think Kyle Hill did a better job at being objective on the problem:

https://www.youtube.com/live/4mx9Rp-SMNk

So like you said, I’m correct. The only issue with thermal radiation is $/kg of payload.

That’s not what you said. You implied the only limiting factor is a reasonable payload that can be resolved by the current incremental improvements to rocket tech.

What I said is that even with massive improvements to rocket tech, it will still be a near impossibility to get as many AI (or even regular datacentre) satellites into space.

The other issue is that the thermal dissipation problem is not solved for such a large amount of heat in space. It’s quite hard to dump large amounts of heat in space, and it needs to be done rapidly with computing. And the larger you make your dissipators the more you run into “how do I move that heat from the source and out towards the edge of the dissipators?” Because you need to utilize ALL of the dissipator if you want to keep your server parts cool. But moving that heat around a massive array is not trivial. If you’re using a fluid and moving it with pumps, then now your adding even more heat with the pumps.

And then there’s the issue with long term investment. These server components are going to be obsolete in a few years (and nevermind failures). And IIRC, they have plans to regularly de-orbit these things every number of years, which means even more launches at a regular basis to keep the swarm numbers constant.

And none of that matters in the face of the low earth orbit crowding issue that IS a massive problem.

Ok, I see your /s tag now. And no, it was not clear that you’re being sarcastic, because I can’t see your face or hear your voice. It’s the reason Poe’s law is a thing.

Staffed by 1 or 2 humans each. Required. By law. Armed people. Because, of course they should have guns in space.

Better pitch: just put tons of people in the space station and they can type the “AI” responses!

They’re not going to put up these satellites, because they won’t be close to usable or affordable. Either the workloads will be miniscule, or the cost to put them into orbit is prohibitive.

The whole pitch was a cool sounding “space age” solution to a problem with AI datacentres that everyone is aware of. It was just a snakeoil salesman’s promise just so he could con investors out of money for his sweet 1.7 trillion.

“give me a recipe for dinner”

…

…

…

(2 hours later for signal round-trip)

“Here you go:…”

I see it as a win-win.

Except when they put up about 70x new satellites then what we currently have up there, and cause a cascade of collisions that results in nothing being able to enter orbit (including humans travelling to space).

We’re at 14k satellites.

100k is the cascade failure limit.

Space X is proposing one million satellites.

Edit: my “70x” figure is very fuzzy just-woke-up early morning math. No guarantees.

Edit 2: dang! One million divided by 14k is 71.428! I almost nailed it.

For a single satellite, we’d need a football sized array for heat dissipation. The dissipation capacity isn’t equal across the entire array. And you need some way to move the heat from the centre out towards the edges.

And aside from that, 100k satellites is the limit of objects we can put into low earth orbit before we start risking cascade collisions that break everything into small bits and make getting anything into orbit impossible. We’re currently at 14k objects. Space X is proposing ONE MILLION satellites. And they’ll each need huge heat dissipation arrays.

There are entire websites dedicated to tracking his “promises” and lies.

Basically, if you believe a word that guy says at this point, you deserve to lose all your money.

Self landing rockets were practically impossible not that long ago

Technically, they still are.

Self driving cars were practically impossible not that long ago.

There have been implementations of a sell-driving vehicle since the 1980s, and we’re still far away from “true” full self diving.

Both of these examples demonstrate the adage of “the first 90% of the work takes 10% of the effort, and the last 10% work takes 90% of the effort”.

The main factor against it is the $/kg of payload into space.

Oh my lord no. Although, technically yes but not for the reason you think.

The number one issue is heat dissipation. To radiate the heat from one DC satellite (at the power levels needed to run AI workloads) would need a football sized dissipation array. Even if Space X can invent some magical new physics and cut that down to a quarter of that size (hint: they can’t), we’re still talking about an order of magnitude increase in payload per satellite.

Next on the list is volume. We’re currently at around 14k man-made objects in low earth orbit. As it is, satellites (including the ISS) have to perform collision avoidance maneuvers every so often. The calculated limit of satellites we can put up to low earth orbit before orbital collision maneuvers start to become unmanageable is 100k. Basically after that amount we enter into a state where several corrections for each satellite are made regularly, and a single collision at the 100k limit would result in a cascading series of collisions that will render low earth orbit impossible to use. Basically after that anything you put up will get shredded by the insane amounts of debris.

Space X wants to put up a MILLION massive satellites that will require extremely large structures to dissipate the heat from the very power hungry AI chips.

They fully know the impossibility, and when challenged about the over crowding issue during an interview, an engineer brushed it off as “it’s not a problem”. People who speak that way about science and engineering issues are not serious people.

That’s one of the many issues SpaceX is working to solve, and there’s nothing to suggest they won’t get there.

There are countless engineering and physics reasons why they won’t. Stop sniffing Elon’s farts. They’re not good for your brain.

Edit: all of this is to say: space datacentres are the dumbest idea yet to come out of that idiots face hole. And he’s said a lot of really really dumb things.

I would actually be more interested in custom firmware for our old touch-and-go Roomba

The only thing out there that I know of is https://valetudo.cloud/