Mastodawn

Quixoticgeek Feb 1

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

1/n

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.

2/2

Quixoticgeek Feb 1

Postscript: and before the cult of space Karen start with the "so you're an expert in orbital computing this week are you?" Well. One of my first jobs out of uni involved designing an onboard control system for a satellite. My design has literally been to space. I know what I'm talking about on this one.

Alex von Kitchen Feb 1

@quixoticgeek you hardly need to be an expert to realise this is a terrible idea
"AI" data centres don't make sense before you launch them into orbit

Quixoticgeek Feb 1

@Dangerous_beans I'm just preempting some of the replies.

Alex von Kitchen Feb 1

@quixoticgeek yeah. That mob are tiring

Erik Ableson Feb 1

@Dangerous_beans @quixoticgeek Maybe launch the owners first so they can check out the real estate is up to their requirements?

MarjorieR Feb 1

@Dangerous_beans @quixoticgeek why stop at orbit?
Just send them all into the sun. They'd be more use there.

Alan Bellingham Feb 1

@Dangerous_beans @quixoticgeek @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

https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/its-surprisingly-hard-to-go-to-the-sun/

It's Surprisingly Hard to Go to the Sun - NASA

The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the mass in our solar system. Its gravitational pull is what keeps everything here, from tiny Mercury to the gas giants to

NASA

Very Human Robot Feb 1

@marjolica @Dangerous_beans @quixoticgeek it's very very hard to actually hit the sun.
It literally needs less fuel to (eventually) hit Alpha Centauri!

MarjorieR Feb 1

@StompyRobot @Dangerous_beans @quixoticgeek I suspect it might need a bit less fuel than NASA talk about if you just wanted to drop something into the sun: NASA are very much into designing grazing orbits to maximise information gathering.
But yes, far better not to construct AI data centres, orbiting or otherwise, in the first place.

Alex von Kitchen Feb 1

@StompyRobot @quixoticgeek @marjolica no, a grazing orbit is easier than a collision
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

@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)

Michael Ormsby Feb 1

@junklight @quixoticgeek @cstross Very good point.

I had an Austrian professor in Architecture school in New York. He resided in a loft in Manhattan. I remember him describing in his thick accent how he had set up the bathroom so he could view the Empire State building while he sat on his toilet. “I sit there doing my business and eet reminds me that money is sheet. Never forget that! Money is sheet!”

@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.

Quixoticgeek Feb 1

@davep good bye orbit. Who's gonna want to risk launching through a debris shell to get into orbit? What radio signals are we gonna get through the noise?

@quixoticgeek Yup, that too. Russian roulette for every launch isn't a great idea.

@quixoticgeek looping in @sundogplanets for someone with more up to date and better understanding of the whole thing than me.

@quixoticgeek @davep not just radio seems like it is already interfering with earth based observation, large debris fields just making it worse.

Very Human Robot Feb 1

@davep @quixoticgeek
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.

@StompyRobot @quixoticgeek
Citation?

@StompyRobot @quixoticgeek

Counter-argument.

https://payloadspace.com/esa-report-shows-unsustainable-levels-of-orbital-debris/

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/niac/niac-studies/addressing-key-challenges-to-mapping-sub-cm-orbital-debris-in-leo-via-plasma-soliton-detection/

ESA Report Shows Unsustainable Levels of Orbital Debris

Congestion has gotten so bad in LEO that ESA warns the future of space travel could be in jeopardy.

Payload

Very Human Robot Feb 1

@davep @quixoticgeek
Yes, that report agrees. In that report, here's 30 close events and 0-1 impacts per year, well below 0.1% mission failure.
The report also includes the mitigations that work, which doesn't include "use fewer satellites and go to space less."

@StompyRobot @quixoticgeek

"Things have become so congested that the cumulative volume of spacecraft and debris in LEO is unsustainable, ESA’s 2024 Space Environment Report determined."

Is pretty unequivocal about the trajectory over time. "The low orbit cleans itself up" is not based in fact over our timescales.

Very Human Robot Feb 1

@davep @quixoticgeek I read the report. Their definition of "unsustainable" is much less tolerant of risk than the bar I argued for.

@StompyRobot @quixoticgeek
The point is the amount of debris is increasing as I originally said.

"The low orbit cleans itself up" is patent nonsense. Time for a block, I'm afraid.

Craig Stewart Feb 1

@quixoticgeek I'm very far from being an expert in space or satellites, but I'm pretty good at Data Centres, and there are loads of obvious issues with "Data Centres in space" and less obvious issues. What I'm missing is the potential upsides. If you accept "capacity" as an upside, it'd still be cheaper to build that capacity on the ground. If it's lack of ground to build on, there have been some interesting experiments with underwater data centres. I see no advantage for this announcement.

Martin Gleadow Feb 1

@pmb00cs @quixoticgeek never mind the complexity of preventing the network cables from getting tangled!

Craig Stewart Feb 1

@quixoticgeek @mgleadow that's what a good pair of snips is for. When you need to replace or move a cable, just put in a new cable, then cut the ends off the old cable.

(If I ever catch anyone actually doing this, remember that I have a good pair of snips!)

0xC0DEC0DE07EA Feb 1

@quixoticgeek uuuuggh, didn’t this debunking dance already occur like a month ago when Sam Altman or some other idiot brought it up?!

Quixoticgeek Feb 1

@c0dec0dec0de welcome to tech bro whackamole

0xC0DEC0DE07EA Feb 1

@quixoticgeek be better if it were a bit more literal, might do them a bit of good to get a bop on the head with a soft mallet

Quixoticgeek Feb 1

@c0dec0dec0de agreed.

Neo Ehproque Feb 1

@c0dec0dec0de @quixoticgeek yes it did. And people still treat it like a normal idea

David Gerard Feb 1

@quixoticgeek *space pedo

Quixoticgeek Feb 1

@davidgerard ????

@davidgerard @quixoticgeek

Here's a sample from the latest Epstein emails dump coincidentally on the same day he decided to make a big orbital data center announcement

Quixoticgeek Feb 1

@gbargoud @davidgerard oh right. You know using a whole sentence is a really good way to avoid ambiguity

@davidgerard @quixoticgeek

For such a common pattern, it's surprising that this seems to be the only citation I can easily find for a correcting asterisk:

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2337:_Asterisk_Corrections

2337: Asterisk Corrections - explain xkcd

explain xkcd is a wiki dedicated to explaining the webcomic xkcd. Go figure.

Quixoticgeek Feb 1

@gbargoud @davidgerard it also looks like an accusation. You've 500 characters to use. Use them to be nice.

David Gerard Feb 1

@quixoticgeek @gbargoud I would say learn to post

Very Human Robot Feb 1

@gbargoud @davidgerard @quixoticgeek

deal withthis. thanyou.

@davidgerard @quixoticgeek @StompyRobot

That should be in every comment section for anything he posts for the rest of his life

@quixoticgeek All I understood is that by 2050 we must start fracking in the upper atmosphere to extract the valuable metal oxides deposited there by the burned up satellites. /s

PortabelloBelle🚚🇪🇺🏳️‍⚧️Feb 1

Seems like you've hit upon a brilliant business idea, although set-up costs may be sky high *smirk*

Steve Hersey Feb 1

@quixoticgeek
As someone else who worked on space electronics for a decade, I can affirm that yes, this person does indeed know what they are talking about.

Dendrobatus Azureus Feb 1

@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 Feb 1

@quixoticgeek he's desperate for new money, so he needs a new fairy tale people will invest in...

Dieter Schlabonski Feb 1

It only remains to be seen whether we destroy our potential future as a space-faring species by shrouding our planet in an impenetrable layer of space junk, or if we manage to ruin our climate, and thus economy and lastly civilization, before it comes to that.

Very Human Robot Feb 1

@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...

@StompyRobot @quixoticgeek lmao elon stan

Very Human Robot Feb 1

@jiub @quixoticgeek
I don't care about people I care about engineering.

@quixoticgeek This has got to be driven primarily by jurisdictional and regulatory concerns. "No one can stop my spicy chatbot... in... space..."