I am just honestly confused. There seem to be no logical reason for it, except that it would raise the stock value of rocket producers like SpaceX and Blue Origin.

  • Archangel1313@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    This idea is a total scam. This is just a way of asking investors for an enormous amount of money, with literally no intention of actually following through with it.

    They might throw a couple of cheap satellites in orbit, just to say they “did it”…but no one with any actual comprehension of these things is honestly expecting it to yield results. The vast majority of that investment money, is going to be used for unrelated things.

    In any sane world, this would be considered fraud. But, here we are.

    • tempest@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      Remember when Microsoft dumped containers of servers in the ocean to test things.

      If they couldn’t make that work they obviously can’t make space work.

      It was always a scam.

      • mushroommunk@lemmy.today
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        3 days ago

        You’re talking about project Natick. All reports I saw was that it was actually a resounding success. The only reason I’ve seen for why it was cancelled is because it wasn’t able to be kept at the bleeding edge as they couldn’t upgrade the servers randomly. It doesn’t really compare to launching them into space which gives basically zero benefit but adds an insane amount to the cost.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          “resounding success” but given up as a bad idea.

          The fact that it could possibly “work” was not really in question, it was whether it would be worth the costs and drawbacks. It was not.

          But either way you are right, space even worse than water with no benefit compared to ocean.

        • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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          3 days ago

          Not only upgrading hardware, but maintaining any issues along the way. Hard drives fail, Memory fails, etc. That’s just stuff that happens and can be easily remedied in a normal data center.

          Now take all of those issues, and instead of being underwater… move it 500 miles into the vacuum of space. And take the heat dissipation of all that water, and make it a fraction because the vacuum of space is terrible at radiating heat despite the ambient temperature being so cold.

          • Inucune@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            Cosmic radiation causes random bit flips. You would have to shield everything and make it redundant. More power, more heat, more cooling, more power… Welcome to the loop.

        • tempest@lemmy.ca
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          3 days ago

          Yeah… No maintenance… Which is a thing that datacenters require.

          Enterprise Hardware can have redundancy but things still break.

          If it was a success they would have done it. Ergo, not a success.

        • fizzle@quokk.au
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          3 days ago

          IDK about success.

          I think it went predictably in that the cooling was ok but maintenance was an issue.

          Seawater is a real bitch. If you could cool things with it we would just pump it onshore.

        • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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          2 days ago

          The core reason space datacenters are uneconomical, is the 5 year replacement cycle. Includes trashing the solar and radiators every 5 years even if they could last 30+ because datacenter modules need to auto-deploy their own power and radiators. Ocean deployments would be far better. Wind/solar/batteries doesn’t need frequent change. Just drop in a new module every 5 years, while taking out the old one, and rebuilding its insides.

          • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Nah nah, we aren’t allowed to do wind and solar anymore. The US president is paying a shitload of money to a lot of companies to stop them from developing renewables in the US and abroad.

      • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        The microsoft thing worked. It also highlighted a lot of issues that would also exists in space, but way worse.

        But “genius billionaire buffoon” can’t read apparently.

      • Krusty@quokk.au
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        2 days ago

        Microsoft? Hahaha. Like Microsoft would know shit about doing anything in space?

        While Elon has no issues crashing and burning, no matter how many times it takes, until he succeeds… That’s a true commitment to trial and error!

    • holy_scroller@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      I wish you could make money off of nowing when a company is spouting bullshit, but after watching Tesla stock for a decade…