alt Hacker NewsI was initially very skeptical about the viability of space-based data centers but after a couple hours reading papers, studies and summary technical assessments I realized there are a range of credible expert viewpoints from, "pretty unlikely" to "it could actually work". There at least appear to be plausible, though unproven, solutions to the most obvious drive-by objections I had off the top of my non-expert head.
Of course, there are still a lot of unknowns, any of which could prove fatal to the concept but I'm no longer comfortable just dismissing it as "obviously ridiculous."
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There are a lot of things that are possible that make no financial sense.
Yeah you would need 10-20 American football fields worth of radiators for a single data-center... so yes, it "can" work, but it's completely inefficient and unrealistic.
Putting a datacentre in space may be feasible but the scale that he's suggesting is really unbelievable.
And if he's actually capable of producing solar panels in the quantity that he's talking about in the time frame that he's talking about -- why doesn't he just put them on earth to solve our growing climate change problems and fuel shortages?
Did you find a credible solution for heat dissipation in the papers you read? I fear the laws of thermodynamics will kill this project.
I think what often gets confused is people saying it isn't viable with "it is not physically possible".
It is physically possible, but it won't have positive ROI so it is not viable.
If you have a paper/post doing the calculations for positive ROI, I'd be all ears. It can even have the optimistic Elon assumptions about price of mass to orbit.