Comment on Why put data centers in space?
FaceDeer@fedia.io 1 week agoThe actual Starmind satellites will have 175kW of compute on them, Scott made that video before the specs were released so he assumed a minimum package. But all of this scales linearly, if you double the power usage you just double the size of the solar panels and double the size of the radiators. If a 20kW satellite works then you can bolt ten of them together and get a 200kW satellite that works too.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Cool, so we moved from a single motorcycle to a couple of cars, still a long way from a parking lot. You’re not understanding the issue, the scale is not feasible, you’ll spend millions of dollars to launch a single satellite that’s not even 1/10th of a tiny data center.
FaceDeer@fedia.io 1 week ago
They're not putting up just one satellite. It's going to be a constellation. The constellation as a whole will be equivalent to a data center.
Also, it won't cost them millions of dollars to launch a single satellite. That's why this project is paired up with Starship development, the two go hand in hand. Starship makes the launches cheap, Starmind gives Starship the scale of demand a ship like that needs for its economics to work.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Even by their own estimates it’s 2-10 million dollars per launch, imagine thinking that spending 6 million dollars to get a single rack in space where it can’t be maintained and will become garbage in a couple of years is a good investment. And that’s just the launch price, you still need to build the satellite, with its hundreds of square meters of solar panels and radiators. There’s no point arguing this any more than there was a point arguing hyperloop, until they present a feasible product it’s just big talk.
FaceDeer@fedia.io 1 week ago
2-10 million per launch, but each launch will carry ~60 satellites. So that's as little as $30,000 per satellite.