alt Hacker NewsWould the “datacenter” satellites be much larger? I thought each of them was only going to carry a rack or a cabinet worth of GPUs?
Replies
pyrale • today at 5:09 PM
They would be as large as your average hyperloop capsule.
largbae • today at 2:25 PM
Yes but would these need to be in LEO? I would imagine that they would aim for farther orbits to spend a smaller percentage of their time in Earth's shadow
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Much larger.
The compute part may be a rack or a cabinet worth of GPUs (though TBH the public designs are currently vague to the point of being artistic impressions), but they also need to come with a PV array big enough to power that, plus a cooling array that's going to be close to 25% as big as the PV array regardless of what unit size they go for in the end.
If they settle on making e.g. 120 kW satellites, that would be about 400 m^2 for the PV and another 100 m^2 for the radiator.