[automatic6131]

Almost no one said those were impossible, just hard. This is completely different. Rather like... a train in a vacuum tube hard. Definitely harder than making a subway with autonomous trains under a modern city. And much harder than being a third rate AI lab, though Elon did hit that target perfectly.

[chuckadams]

Train-in-a-vacuum-tube isn't even restricted by the laws of physics, and it doesn't have to be a perfect vacuum anyway, just low pressure. Data Centers IN SPAAAAAACE have the teensy little problem of cooling that you can't just brute-force a solution to. Those giant things dangling off the ISS that make up most of its footprint aren't solar panels, they're heatsinks, and they still have issues managing heat.

[rbanffy]

Well... If the launch cost is low enough you can just pack a radiator large enough. Good thing this might drive the development of a wider Starship and Ultraheavy booster (or a Superheavy-Heavy where three Superheavy rockets boost a bigger, heavier Starship). Eventually we can get to the Comicallyheavy booster.

[chuckadams]

Perhaps, but I don't see the costs getting anywhere near being worth it. You'd need a space elevator or to manufacture the sinks IN SPAA— er, in space. The latter is theoretically possible but still extremely remote, the former still requires unobtanium.

[rbanffy]

It all depends on how far you are willing to go to make your server invulnerable to a police raid.

[throw310822]

The police will just arrest you and/ or anyone who operates the downlinks or connects to you. The server can stay in space.

[chuckadams]

"Encouraging" the uplink operator into backdooring the system is also very likely a page in the playbook.

[aeternum]

Energy radiation scales T^4 so physics is really on your side here. If you can engineer GPUs to run a little hotter you get significant decreases in radiator size required.

[adrian_b]

That will have to wait 10 years, or even a few more years, for a transition from silicon to a semiconductor with a wider bandgap.

[aeternum]

I doubt that, there really wasn't much effort put to allowing GPUs to run hotter. You can always add a heat pump to create the thermal gradient of the GPU can't handle it itself.