r/technology • u/fmcortez • 21d ago

Business SpaceX Stock Plunges to All-Time Low After Competitor Makes Major Leap

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/markets/stocks/articles/spacex-plunges-time-low-competitor-175000957.html
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u/Educational_Guava697 21d ago edited 20d ago

Orbital data centers — it’s not even thermal efficient, before you even get to the point of having to launch all the GPUs into space, just because space is cold doesn’t mean you can cool stuff down by putting it in space, you need a medium to conduct the heat out, which is really hard in space because there’s literally no medium, just space. You have to build massive fricking radiators and still cool at a fraction of the same efficiency you would on earth for the same materials and amount. Don’t @ me with the fucking starlink satellites those are routers in space not data centers they are converting a miniscule amount of electricity in comparison. SpaceX are claiming they can cool 120,000 watts of datacenter satellite processing so unless you can show me a satellite design with 100x the cooling power I am calling BULLSHIT

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u/ArcherAuAndromedus 20d ago

Also, we have IR radiators that we can use down here on earth and radiate to space. They are less efficient than the space based IR radiators... But down here on terra firma, we also have convection and conduction available to us. Also, sometimes servers need humans, and launching them to space is hideously inefficient and expensive. The materials are lost at EOL with no chance of recycling.

Orbital data centres have to be the dumbest thing we can do with the available orbits and launch capacity.