this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
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Anybody Who Thinks Orbital Data Centers are a Good Idea Is Suffering from AI Psychosis, Experts Argue (tech.yahoo.com)
submitted 17 hours ago by sanitation@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 7 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

There's a bunch of sealed underwater data centres and they found reliability went right up (see Project Natick). Underwater has the benefit of actually having cooling though ..

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 15 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Yet Microsoft abandoned the idea because it was so fraught with commercialisation issues. Which is exactly what the experts are saying

Can't maintain, can't upgrade, can't repair, it pollutes the environment with abandoned shit and it doesn't scale

Reliability probably went up because of the extra expense put into making sure it won't immediately fail and need to be repaired

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not saying the space data centres are a good or even viable idea, just saying you can improve the reliability significantly if you try. The space data centre planis a non starter, there's nowhere for the heat to go.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, investing in reliability will increase reliability

You can radiate the heat with a biiiig long radiator but it doesn't solve any of the other problems or improve commercial scalability

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone -2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (3 children)

You may note that this thread is talking about data centre reliability ..

Also you can't radiate heat in space ..

[–] peeteer@feddit.org 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

The ISS has 475m^2 of ammonia filled radiators that like to disagree with you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Control_System

[–] Trail@lemmy.world 1 points 13 minutes ago

Sure. What did it cost? How many flights to get it up there? How many human spacewalk missions to maintain it?

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 hour ago

Also you can’t radiate heat in space …

How does the Sun work?

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 4 points 5 hours ago

You can ONLY radiate heat in space..

[–] jungle@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Right, I'm sure the hard radiation will help with that as well.