There are currently about 12600 satellites in orbit. As a result on average every day 3 fall out of space, dumping metals and other nasties into the upper atmosphere.
If we continue that rate of satellite loss, 1 in 4200, and extrapolate it to 1,000,000. That would be ~238 satellites PER DAY, falling out of the sky and spreading the materials they are made up of in the upper atmosphere. With some more substantial chunks hitting the surface, and possibly people.
That's just bonkers
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Quixoticgeek
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •This of course completely overlooks all other practicalities of orbital datacentres, that makes putting high power computing in orbit. Which for a summary include: too much radiation noise making the systems unstable (see Wikipedia for "single even upset"), cooling when you have to dump heat into a vacuum, low data bandwidth (compared to a fibre on earth), latency, and shear fucking cost.
It's an absolutely fucking stupid idea. And I'm angry I have to spend my Sunday debunking this shit.
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Quixoticgeek
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •reshared this
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Alex von Kitchen
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •"AI" data centres don't make sense before you launch them into orbit
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Quixoticgeek
in reply to Alex von Kitchen • • •Alex von Kitchen
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •MarjorieR
in reply to Alex von Kitchen • • •Just send them all into the sun. They'd be more use there.
Alan Bellingham
in reply to MarjorieR • • •@Dangerous_beans @marjolica Taking your comment a lot more seriously than you meant it: the sheer energy to do so is enormous. It's 55 times more energy than getting to Mars, according to NASA
nasa.gov/solar-system/its-surp…
It's Surprisingly Hard to Go to the Sun - NASA
NASAVery Human Robot
in reply to MarjorieR • • •It literally needs less fuel to (eventually) hit Alpha Centauri!
MarjorieR
in reply to Very Human Robot • • •But yes, far better not to construct AI data centres, orbiting or otherwise, in the first place.
Alex von Kitchen
in reply to MarjorieR • • •To get something to hit the sun you have to cancel out all orbital velocity, if you only do most you end up with a highly elliptical orbit
The parker solar probe for instance still ended up with an aphelion around the orbit of Venus
Matilda
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •@cstross exactly my point:
"oh these rich people know better than us"
no they fucking don't - money makes you stupid - they all decide that they were brilliant to get some money and promptly stop having any critical thinking skills
(i've spent too long around these kind of people)
David Penfold
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •There's also the Kessler Syndrome cascading debris risk that the boffins at ESA and EUMETSAT were worrying about 15 years ago (yes, I worked at the latter in Darmstadt).
Once we get there it's goodbye LEO for thé foreseeable future.
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Quixoticgeek
in reply to David Penfold • • •David Penfold
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •OldGeek
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Very Human Robot
in reply to David Penfold • • •The low orbit cleans itself up.
The high orbits are so insanely big that there's a fair amount of margin before we'd get even 1/10 of a percent of mission failures.
David Penfold
in reply to Very Human Robot • • •Citation?
David Penfold
in reply to David Penfold • • •@StompyRobot
Counter-argument.
payloadspace.com/esa-report-sh…
nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/nia…
Orbital Debris
Loura Hall (NASA)Hamish Buchanan
in reply to David Penfold • • •Totally unscientific observation: the illustration makes Earth look like the worst virus ever.
@davep @StompyRobot @quixoticgeek
David Penfold
in reply to Hamish Buchanan • • •0xC0DEC0DE07EA
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Quixoticgeek
in reply to 0xC0DEC0DE07EA • • •0xC0DEC0DE07EA
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Quixoticgeek
in reply to 0xC0DEC0DE07EA • • •David Gerard
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Quixoticgeek
in reply to David Gerard • • •George B
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Quixoticgeek
in reply to George B • • •George B
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •@davidgerard
For such a common pattern, it's surprising that this seems to be the only citation I can easily find for a correcting asterisk:
explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php…
2337: Asterisk Corrections - explain xkcd
www.explainxkcd.comQuixoticgeek
in reply to George B • • •jsl
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Steve Hersey
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Dendrobatus Azureus
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Thank you for giving us your Insight on this complex matter I was as ignorant as a 2-year-old child when it comes down to this subject now I'm in the loop
🦋💙❤️💋#Lobi 💙💕🌹💐💙🦋
Hermannus Stegeman
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •dch
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Dieter Schlabonski
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Very Human Robot
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •The cooling is manageable (the solar panels have a back side)
The low bandwidth and high latency are probably tractable for many AI and training purposes.
The whole point of the proposal, is to reduce the cost to orbit by another factor 100, just like space x did the first time, so complaining about cost misses the entire point. (Whether they can do it, I don't know!)
However. I don't see a good solution for radiation hardening. We have 15 pounds of shielding per square inch...
sdbbp
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Quixoticgeek
in reply to sdbbp • • •sdbbp
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Nicovel0 🍉
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Quixoticgeek reshared this.
Tubemeister
in reply to Nicovel0 🍉 • • •Konosocio
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in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •