[gpugreg]

> As part of this agreement, we have also expressed interest in partnering with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity.

Anthropic is either taking this space business more serious than the general public, or posting this sentence was part of the deal to get the compute.

[Sevii]

Anthropic needs any compute they can get. So if Elon wants to build orbital data centers Anthropic would be happy to run models on it. There isn't really any doubt Elon can build orbital data centers the question is if they are economical compared to earth based.

[23rf]

I love how this line of thinking completely avoids the issue re. improvements in local models.

I suppose if you are desperate to justify a large investment this what you would do - frame the story in a particular way.

[impulser_]

Local models are always going to be useless unless compute get significantly cheaper, and it's not. TSMC might literally run out of capacity to build any consumer compute product.

Once computer constraints ease up, you will see much larger models. The reason LLM seems to have stalled a bit is because there just not enough compute.

You have more people using AI which requires more compute, and you want to build larger models which requires more compute and you have limited compute. What do you do?

[23rf]

Right.. and computers were once the size of a large room vs now fit into a pocket.

" The reason LLM seems to have stalled a bit is because there just not enough compute."

lol okay mate.

[impulser_]

https://x.ai/news/anthropic-compute-partnership

There is literally not enough compute dude. If we had infinite compute we would see everyone building Mythos size models.

"Right.. and computers were once the size of a large room vs now fit into a pocket."

Yeah because we offload much of the compute to off device. You think we would have these small computers in our pockets if the internet didn't exist?

[s08148692]

> Right.. and computers were once the size of a large room vs now fit into a pocket.

and yet now we have far bigger rooms with far bigger computers anyway

Hardware may improve exponentially, but demand for compute increases double-exponentially. we'll always need more, bigger computers

[cyclopeanutopia]

What are you talking about

There is no doubt that it's not a serious idea.

[charlieflowers]

Help me understand why not? I know solar power generation in space, and "beaming" the power back, was a naive idea. But this would actually use the power up there, mostly for training, but also for inference.

That claim seems reasonable. I have zero knowledge of the economics of launching and maintaining satellites though.

[PufPufPuf]

As I understand it, the problem is cooling. There isn't any medium to take away the heat, so the only option is to slowly radiate it away.

[Gagarin1917]

Which is apparently manageable. Scott Manley isn’t an industry veteran, but he does know a lot about space engineering and science. Here’s his breakdown of the feasibility, and heat management is not really a major issue:

https://youtu.be/DCto6UkBJoI

[throwaway85825]

Heat management is not a technical issue but a reliability issue.

[Sammi]

Anyone who has googled just once to ask if datacenters in space make any sense, has found out they don't because they can't get rid of heat.

That leaves only two kinds of people left who are still talking excitedly about datacenters in space: The uninformed and the grifters.

[dgfl]

The existence of starlink proves that this is false. Look at most current pitches, they don’t talk about GW-class monsters anymore. There’s absolutely nothing stopping a 20-30kW satellite bus the size of starlink (or I guess up to 100kW? once starship is available - it’s all about payload fairing diameter) from hosting ~1 rack of compute and antennas. The economics may or may not make sense, we’ll have to see.

There’s very little research work needed to make this happen; it’s all about engineering some satellite buses and having them fly in close formation to get a “data center”. And this group of satellites in sun-synchronous orbit would relay to a comms constellation e.g. starlink itself) and operate as a global scale data center. The heat management and orbital mechanics are all straight forward really.

[redox99]

The area you need in radiators is only half the area you need in solar panels. So it's definitely not a deal breaker.

Its still very dumb because of economics, logistics, serviceability and more.

[small_model]

SpaceX have presented on this and it's fairly straightforward and they already do it with starlink satellites, just at a larger scale. Sound like you are the uniformed one (or an EDS victim)

[lijok]

what do you mean they can’t get rid of heat? radiators exist

[dzhiurgis]

Scott Manley, I’d say one of the top pop space youtubers say otherwise. If anything it’s easier in space. On earth most complexity in datacenter is cooling. In space you just radiate it away.

And SpaceX already proven they can launch sort of datacenters 10k times by launching Starlink (up to 20KW of solar each IIRC).

FWIW Musk should support Bernie Sanders more. Putting moratoriums on datacenters would make space based ones far more economical.

[runako]

Cost.

The economics don't work unless Starship is doing flights in quantity, and it has met or exceeded its cost targets.

Roughly, a single rack plus solar to power it in the $15m+ range just to launch. (This assumes power dissipation is handled via some means that does not require launch to orbit. Also does not include batteries.) Choose your own hardware for the rack, but call it < $5m.

SpaceX earning $15m every time someone launches a $5m rack would be a great business for SpaceX.

Use your own calculator/LLM, but mine is suggesting that the ~$7B Colossus 1 data center in TFA would be around $50B if launched on Falcon 9 (still ignoring cooling and batteries).

(There are obviously a lot of other asterisks. I'm ignoring power storage and heat dissipation. Maintenance probably doesn't matter given 75% of cost is in the launch. Network bandwidth could be a problem considering how DCs are used. Competition - if Company A spends $100B for $25B of actual AI infra, how competitive will they be against Company B who gets $100B for their $100B by spending it in Canada or Mexico, which they can do right now? Etc.)

None of this works without Starship, which has not set a date for its first LEO insertion test yet. Yet the whole point of orbital DCs is nothing on the ground can move fast enough, hence the rush to orbit...which can't really move at all right now.

No, it doesn't make any sense.

[super256]

In space you get bit flips fairly quickly when using very small transistors. You would have to run stuff on fairly old hardware, which probably makes the whole thing economically inefficient for serious "computation in space".

[airspresso]

> posting this sentence was part of the deal to get the compute

This 100%

[londons_explore]

Expressing an interest is presumably free... So anthropic might as well.

[scottyah]

Source? I'd like to read more on Anthropic's views of space compute

[DANmode]

> As part of this agreement, we have also expressed interest in

[stingraycharles]

Which is now their official position I guess as this whole “AI space datacenter” stuff is a significant part of the whole SpaceX IPO.

I assume privately they may not share that opinion, but it’s not in Anthropic’s interest to talk about this (very little to gain, and may ruffle a lot of feathers if they say the wrong thing).

[ethbr1]

AI space datacenters only make sense from one perspective -- sovereignty.

If you're someone with a lot of money, who dislikes governments meddling in your business, and often pisses off governments...

... oh, I see why this is an Elon talking point now.

[theptip]

But also - anyone would be interested in purchasing orbital compute at the price Elon is quoting.

[JMKH42]

I don't think space compute is going to work out, but I would certainly say "yes happy to buy space compute from you in the future if you offer it at a good price"

If it happens it happens, if not, it doesn't.

[CamperBob2]

It makes no sense. We're being presented with a forced choice -- put them in space, or put them in the middle of downtown Seattle.

This is stupid. I don't understand what's happening... specifically, what mental virus is spreading that lowers everybody's IQ by 10-20 points, evidently including my own. Put the data centers in the ocean, powered by solar and networked with Starlink or LEO. Put them in the desert. Put them 20 miles south of Nowhere, Idaho.

But space?!

[Karrot_Kream]

Because the US has levied high tariffs on solar cells, can't build their own solar cells economically enough, and has such a torrid permitting system that it can't build transmission lines. Natural gas is the only form of generation that's easy to permit outside cities (due to pipeline agreements and this admin fast-tracking natural gas generation approval) but few cities will allow one. DCs need to be built within low latency interconnect of urban areas or else they become uncompetitive.

Elon claims (which I take with a huge grain of salt because he's made endless broken promises in investor calls and interviews) that he disagrees with the administration's stance on solar and would use it to power his DCs if he could, but contends that permitting is a huge problem.

The US needs to figure out how to build again.

> This is stupid. I don't understand what's happening... specifically, what mental virus

"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes"

[CamperBob2]

What does that have to do with my point? Space-based data centers need solar cells too. They are just like terrestrial data centers, only more expensive. For every dollar you save on the PV array, you'll spend two more on radiators.

And you don't need permits in international waters, any more than you need them in orbit. Lease space on container ships.

[Karrot_Kream]

The argument is that it's too hard to gain the necessary approvals on Earth such that space is faster and easier. Not sure I buy it fully (I do see it somewhat), but that's the argument.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

The permitting slowdown is if it want to connect to the grid. If you want to run solar behind the meter, you can go nuts.

[zeafoamrun]

The middle of downtown Seattle would be greatly improved if it were replaced by a giant data center.

[re-thc]

> or posting this sentence was part of the deal to get the compute

All it says is expressed interest.

That's like asking a casual how are you...

[joshstrange]

Ehh, I think they are just "kissing the ring". This was part of the agreement for the terrestrial datacenter access, pretend like the space orbital compute is more than the boondoggle that it clearly is.

I want to be clear, I do think that one day something like that will exist, I just don't think it's anywhere close to being a reality, much like FSD.

Also it costs them, almost [0], nothing to say it and then later come up with some reason why they are no longer interested.

[0] Maybe a little bit of respect

[anthonypasq]

most of the big tech ceos have mentioned this.

[shimman]

Most big tech CEOs are people that only "succeeded" due to have an unregulated monopoly or picking the right lotto ticket and not due to any innate above average intelligence. Go look at the 100s of billions in wasted capital and tell me who benefitted from such waste while workers + children suffer from lack of medical care.

You honestly expect this trajectory to continue unabated?

[pdimitar]

> You honestly expect this trajectory to continue unabated?

Knowing humanity's history, yes. Not sure we're ever going to see a second French Revolution. People are pacified and are not rioting. And they really should. Most of us are kind of privileged. I know people out there who are barely holding on and the recent fuel + food price increases might push them over the edge to actual poverty.

[bethekidyouwant]

But not French revolution poverty to be fair.

[Rover222]

It’s weird to not take this seriously. It’s obvious it’s serious and they’re pursuing it.

[s08148692]

The whole armchair engineer debate online about this is hilarious

I'm just a software engineer, all I need to know is SpaceX is aggressively pursuing this - that's enough for me to believe it's viable

SpaceX operates literally orders of magnitudes more satellites than anyone else. If anybody understands the physics and engineering of space compute, it's SpaceX. Lay people debating this online is just showing their ignorance as far as I'm concerned, and it mostly comes from an emotional place of wanting Musk enterprises to fail

[Rover222]

exactly

[scottyah]

Thank you for a reasonable comment. I know internet people love to comment on how "dumb" things are, but we're seeing a growing group of funded, motivated, and intelligent people working towards a common goal. It's at least something to be curious about, I wish the comments were more oriented towards in-depth discussions on the actual current blockers.

[sourcegrift]

Anybody who spends 5 minutes on reddit outside of pornographic or cuckoldry subs knows that this is not a serious idea