[kumarvvr]

So, Amazon wants to own the tubes too?

I guess the stack should be completed with this. AWS servers, satellite communications, boxes to view content on TVs, apps on mobiles, content creation studios, advertising, product placement, product sales. Whew!

I guess they also want expertise to launch stuff into space, in case it becomes feasible to run space data centers.

[karavelov]

> I guess they also want expertise to launch stuff into space

Blue Origin is Jeff Bezos' private aerospace company

[trhway]

They would also need to protect all this stuff spread globally and into the space. No government will be able to do that - like we've already seen with the datacenters being hit in the Gulf states. Company like AMZN will have all the components for the most modern weapon system - global autonomous drone offense and defense network with the space component (or imagine a 1 GW datacenter in space temporarily rerouting its power into a laser or a microwave effector 80-ies StarWars style :) plus de-facto global intelligence network that each of these companies have, and thus will have and will be able to better protect themselves. Those large BigTechs will unavoidably have to move into defense, for themselves and as-a-service for smaller transnationals.

[iso1631]

There is a constant lack of acceptance of the privatisation of the world in the tech industry. Or of course people realise it but like it.

The randian matra of "Private = good, government = bad" always wins out

You end up with a private company run by the elite, not the people. One Dollar One Vote.

[ge96]

Amazon seems to have a service for everything, one time I saw they had satellite ground station as a service

[compounding_it]

I think America in general is moving to a service based economy where you don’t own anything anymore. Everything from cars (lease) to homes (rentals) to electronics to insurance etc comes at a monthly cost. This kind of model works when the central government is trusted (or at least perceived to be trusted) to keep the wheel churning. I think the current government took some of the power back from big tech and people didn’t like it. Very interesting because the whole argument was private companies having too much power. Now the argument is government having too much power.

[enos_feedler]

You only now just think this? The writing has been on the wall for quite some time. Especially as you move down in age cohort.

[wolvoleo]

Yes even the WEF has been planning for this for a decade with their "you will own nothing but you will be happy" indoctrination.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

At some point government and companies will be merging into one.

[jasoncartwright]

https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/

[bigfatkitten]

Probably for their existing L/S-band spectrum and carrier licenses.

[piokoch]

Why space data centers? What advantage this would have? Cooling will be a big issue, while it is easily solved on the planet earth, as we have water, air that can transfer heat away.

[bigfatkitten]

They don’t have any advantages at all.

People point to the cost of land, but if being physically inaccessible isn’t a problem, then there are lots of cheap places on Earth you can deploy data centres too at far lower cost than launching them into orbit.

[philipwhiuk]

For now there's a regulatory oversight advantage (or rather lack of same).

[bigfatkitten]

There’s a whole lot more oversight, from the radiocommunications and aviation safety regulators.

[iso1631]

Desert land is free. Floating data centres in the middle of the pacific is free.

If a state, or even rich billionaire, wanted to take out your data centre in low earth orbit, it's only a few million dollars to launch a retrograde rocket which explodes into 10 ton of shrapnel, or even less to forget the orbit and just launch it directly up.

[philipwhiuk]

You can do the same to the ones in the Pacific and desert too.

It's a declaration of war much the same.

[sublinear]

Defense systems in space need to be... in space.

I don't think people are looking at this the right way. They need to be inaccessible to terrestrial and air weapons, have lower latency, not be dependent on power plants, etc.

[iso1631]

Far easier for someone like Iran or China or the US to take out an LEO satellite than an underground data centre, or even a surface on in the case of DCs in US or China.

[sublinear]

It's also pretty easy to launch another one into orbit to replace it? I'm not sure I understand what you mean. We can have all these options simultaneously. The easiest targets are where the faster paced more offensive action is going to be.

People have been talking about waging war in space for many decades now. All the arguments for and against it were made a very long time ago, and it was decided it's a hell of a lot better that way. Even a nuclear blast in orbit is more tolerable.

Space superiority is just too damn appealing as the next frontier after land, air, and sea where we've been stuck in stalemate for a while. It's perfectly natural we go to space for this, including the datacenters.

[ericmay]

I don’t think Iran has the capability to shoot down LEO satellites. Kind of weird to loop them in with China here other than China helping Iran.

[iso1631]

You need about 2,500m/s delta V to reach LEO altitude. Iranian long range rockets are well in that range.

It's thus far easier for Iran to hit an LEO DC than one in Colorado

[ericmay]

Are you suggesting for a fact that Iran as the guidance and targeting systems to identify specific LEO objects, and fire missiles at those targets with accuracy?

[lxgr]

Iran has a space program capable of launching LEO satellites.

[ericmay]

Launching LEO satellites is a different capability than shooting down LEO satellites.

[RobotToaster]

That's true, but they're also very vulnerable to ground based LASERs.

[nish__]

You don't have to buy real estate.

[iso1631]

Land is pretty much irellevent in the cost.

The Utah Data Center [0] is a 200 acre plot with 35 acres of buildings.

Even prime farmland values is arround $10k an acre, or $2m, but for other land you're talking $400k for that much land [1]

It uses 65MW. The solar panels alone to generate that cost $100 per kW in bulk, or $6.5m.

That's 570GWh a year.

Mount Signal 1 Solar plant, from over a decade ago, produces about that currently. Total cost $365m [2].

Then there's the lifetime? What do you do in 36 months time when you want to replace the hardware with the latest generation? In an earthbound one you turn off the rack, remove the old kit, put the new kit in. In space, it just burns up in the atmosphere.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

[1] https://www.land.com/property/201-acres-in-brown-county-nebr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar

[nish__]

Not for the data center, for the fiber lines.

[iso1631]

Pretty much zero cost. Or just use your satellite capacity you'd use from your space based DC.

[nish__]

Zero cost to run fiber to every household on earth??

[trhway]

>Cooling will be a big issue

a 1m2 at 70C radiates 785 Watt. Seems thet cooling will be more simple than on Earth.

[pretendgeneer]

A 1m2 heatsink/fan on earth can sink kWs. My heatpump is about 1m2 area and can sink 15kw. Seems earth is at least 20x times better.

[iso1631]

If you build a pyramid with the base pointing to the sun (as solar), and a "height" about 5 times the base in constant shadow, with decent internal circulation, that will operate at sub-20C just from the two radiative sides pointing away from Earth (you make the earth pointing sides reflective)

Cooling isn't an issue.

[trhway]

in space 1m2 of thin metal will radiate those 785 watt. No fan, no heatpump, nothing. Only the launch cost. Which given the projected Starship launch cost will be cheaper than installation on Earth.

[saltcured]

Well if they really want to be full stack, they need to also get down into pharmaceuticals and bio-engineering, right?