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by lesuorac 6 days ago
YouTube is probably one of the few companies that could benefit from data centers in space.

Rather than co-locating media servers into ISPs you can stick them into space so they're just closer.

Space in NYC isn't cheap. Space in space is free.
2 comments
HDBaseT 5 days ago
If a data centre is in space, its almost always going to be further away than a data centre on Earth.

Most people in the developed world are probably under 500km away from the nearest data centre, with most connections being established over fibre.

A space DC would require wireless communications, over longer distances. The latency is higher. Not to mention, Jitter, Latency and Packet Loss are pretty consequential to video streaming, specifically real time or live broadcasts.

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lpribis 6 days ago
> Space in NYC isn't cheap. Space in space is free.

... what?

Say what you want about starship etc etc, but space in space is far from free and will be for a long time.

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lesuorac 6 days ago
Who do you pay rent to in space?

Space is free; you don't even pay property taxes.

Transportation costs are not but that's the whole reason you invest into (at the time) a space transportation company.

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lpribis 5 days ago
You can't just get something to space and then leave it there for free. Any maintenance is way more expensive than a data center on the ground (be it via extra trips or extra R&D for autonomous operating).
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lesuorac 5 days ago
You can't leave anything on the ground for free either.

Like what is your argument? A new technology is expensive? That's why you invest into bringing the costs down.

Google invested into balloons to share internet (Loom). Which they eventually gave up on but the correct decision is to try new things and then evaluate their future success. Not just armchair decide that change is scary.

I'm not saying space data centers should happen tomorrow but just that ruling them out completely for YouTube is foolish. Like Sports often send the video feed through space back to earth to be processed. You can skip a step there by just sending it to space, processing it there, and then send it back down to subscribers.

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