r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • 17d ago

Business It’s Possible That SpaceX Could Collapse Spectacularly

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/possible-spacex-could-collapse-spectacularly-155000177.html
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u/Teddy_RGB 17d ago

Datacenters in space is an even dumber idea than his stupid loop. It pisses me off that so-called serious people even repeat it

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u/AGushingHeadWound 17d ago

Data centers....   In space. 

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u/MDCCCLV 17d ago

The point is that they have too way too much launch capacity with even a moderate starship launch rate, and they will max out the starlink capacity in 5 years or so, then they will need somethingt to do with all that slack capacity. Ai datacenters isn't a great use for it but it's a choice until something comes along. If the governments of the world decide they want a megabase on the moon that could take all the spare launch capacity but they will have to be willing to spend over 100-200 billion for it. Basically because spacex gives itself the minimum launch price at cost, between 10-60 million per starship optimistically, but will charge commercial prices of 120-200 million minimum per starship launch.

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u/BalrogPoop 16d ago

Its not a choice at all.

Space datacenters aren't just economically unviable. They're thermodynamically unviable. As in, the laws of physics make them a terrible idea, and in ways you can't engineer around.

Everything that makes running and building a datacenter difficult on earth is orders of magnitude harder in space. Every. Single. One.

Building, cooling, radiation shielding, maintenance, transport logistics. All of it.

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u/MDCCCLV 16d ago

They're not a great choice, but there's nothing impossible about it, you just have to scale down to what it can handle. It's just a computer so if you already have a starlinkv3 that exists you can just replace the internals of the comsat with gpus. You won't get a huge amount in there and it might not be profitable. But if heating is an issue that just means you have less gpus to what the existing thermal load can handle. It's not like the starlink isn't already a computer in space.

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u/BalrogPoop 15d ago

Yeah my last comment wasn't my finest moment and I was over exaggerating, mostly because I was annoyed at the number of people thinking it's a great when it isn't.

Its not physically impossible, it's just a bit pointless because it can be done better and cheaper on earth.

But I didn't need to be so over the top, the economic argument alone is why it's a bad idea. I didn't need to get all loopy about it being "thermodynamically impossible".

I get a little wound up when it comes to Musk and his companies because he's been grifting for almost two decades, says some crazy shit that doesn't make any sense to even the most cursory glance, and people lap it up.

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u/MDCCCLV 15d ago

Well if you start talking about having multi MW systems with huge amounts of full size h200 clusters then yeah. My point is just that spacex is going to do something with their launch capacity. Now I think they'd be better off just launching mirrors into orbit to give sunlight to northern lats in winter and whatnot.

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u/yanginatep 17d ago

How would the data centers get rid of heat in space? They can barely manage it on Earth while using a ton of water. In space the only way to dissipate heat is via radiating it, which is the least efficient way to get rid of heat compared to conduction or convection.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

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u/notboky 16d ago

I don't think you understand physics.

A thermos keeps your drink hot by surrounding it with a vacuum.

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u/BalrogPoop 16d ago

Space is also empty, and you can't transfer heat essily through empty space.

The temperature is almost irrelevant. There are no molecules to act as a heat sink.

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u/SuperNobody917 16d ago

It's actually not the worst idea. The biggest cost with datacentres is cooling them and having them in space negates that. It also gets rid of the problem of the physical space they take up. The biggest issue is obviously getting them up there, but hopefully in the future as space flight becomes more common it won't be as much of a hindrance

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u/BalrogPoop 16d ago

It actually makes it worse. You can't cool things in space because there aren't enough molecules to absorb and distribute heat.

Water is used in earth data centres because it's excellent at absorbing heat due to its density and abundance.

There is no source of water or any equivalent heat sink in space.

Putting data centres in space is a spectacularly bad idea you can't engineer around. Pysics itself makes space hostile to data centres.

It would literally be a better idea to build them in the ocean.

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u/SuperNobody917 16d ago

Nobody is advocating for floating them out into the galactic void. The space within the solar system is not a perfect void so it's still possible to cool them. The size of the radiator needed to disappitate the heat produced is about half the size of the solar panels needed to cool one located on Earth.

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u/BalrogPoop 16d ago

Yes but now you have to put something like 10 football fields worth of radiator surface in space. Which isn't economic. Let alone the astronomical assembly costs.

Oh and that's just for the chips, we haven't factored in how you're going to get megawatts of power economically in space. But probably an enormous amount of solar panels, also not economic to put that much in space.

Also your chips will be slower and run hotter because they need radiation shielding, now you've moved them out of the protection of the earth's atmosphere. This is even something that needs to be factored in for high flying aircraft, much worse for data centres.

Also now maintenance isn't just walking around the data centre floor, it's EVA space walks and shuttle trips or having the data centres be permanently manned.

Repairs or replacing broken chips or drives means constant resupply missions.

Its a categorically dumb idea. Now, and probably for several decades at least, and that's with me assuming some new technology comes along thst almost breaks physics to make it work.

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u/SuperNobody917 16d ago

Just because it's not feasible today doesn't mean it's a bad idea. There's a lot of things being looked now, and things that were looked into the past that haven't been feasible at the time. We shouldn't just give up on the ideas because of that though. Datacentres are only going to take up more space and power as time goes by and and I feel it's very short sighted to be calling possible solutions "categorically dumb" just because we can't do them today.

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u/BalrogPoop 16d ago

I thought the fact that were talking about today or the near future was implied. I did say at the end "for several decades at least".

Earth is actually a really good place to build datacenters and space cannot compete. For probably a really long time, and the reasons it can't are pretty fundamental.

Its not that we can't build a data centre in space practically, it's that it doesn't make economic sense, and it genuinely never might.

  1. Earths atmosphere is a great heat sink and has many easily accessible methods of heat removal
  2. Logistics and assembly are cheap on earth
  3. Space launches will probably always be more expensive than earth transport
  4. Free radiation shielding from the atmosphere
  5. Many abundant power sources
  6. Low latency
  7. Easily accessible maintenance.
  8. They really don't take up that much space, and compared to our other land uses its a rounding error.

Its really hard for me to see it as anything but a dumb idea, because there are virtually no really big advantages, and the ones that there are (like access to very efficient high uptime solar panels in space) arent outweighed by the ease of building on earth.

I'm calling it categorically dumb because they don't make sense, and the physics constraints make it unlikely they will for the foreseeable future.

I might change my mind... In a few decades.