[CuriouslyC]

There's a difference between "infeasible given materials and manufacturing capabilities of the time" and "infeasible as a scalable solution due to the laws of physics"

[rbanffy]

There is also the very practical question of "what problem is this trying to solve?"

[xnx]

To which the answer for SpaceXaiTesla is always: Hype up gullible investors about the glorious future just around the corner.

[Natfan]

*spacexxaiteslacursor

[aeternum]

What law of physics do orbital data centers violate? You must have learned some strange physics.

[grim_io]

How about the physics of space radiation and radiative cooling.

The guy has to rent out his terrestrial data centers because he can't make use of them.

We probably don't need to pollute space with dead GPU's.

[root-parent]

>> What law of physics do orbital data centers violate?

None. That is why they are...in practice... an engineering impossibility :-)

Nobody is disputing you can have a 1kW of compute in orbit...you have that in the space station. But that is a matchbox....

[CuriouslyC]

note the scalable in there. Even under best case assumptions, it's only a good fit for edge coprocessing where latency is super important. You're not going to power the world's compute with a self healing Dyson sphere (but if you think that, I've got something to sell you).

[dreamcompiler]

Thermodynamics.