Cowboy Space (I hate their name so much) published their consolidated response a week ago but we just noticed it.
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Cowboy Space (I hate their name so much) published their consolidated response a week ago but we just noticed it. EDIT: It was due at 5pm EDT today. So... I guess I have to read this shit. Swearing a lot here will get me through it.
A reminder: this is the 4th company that wants to launch fucking enormous "AI data center" satellites into sun-synchronous terminator orbits, giving Earth a ring. This particular company wants 20,000 satellites in one ring.
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And then there's a whole section where they say that the FCC isn't allowed to consider environmental regulations, and they point to Reflect Orbital getting approved where the FCC specifically said they're not allowed to consider anything except radio broadcasts. This section might actually make me cry.
Next section is just... complaining, I think?
And then they end with saying that clearly they need to be approved.
Fuck you, FCC. Kessler Syndrome is on you.
@sundogplanets they've been perfecting their craft for a long time
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@faithisleaping @sundogplanets
Yep. That's what I told a student of mine, who brought up the idea of these AI satellites.
I remember the time when NASA was paying silly money for original old Intel chips because they needed them for space applications that ran longer than anticipated.
BTW, you don't even need to go to space for that kind of problem: I once built a "supercomputer" with a load of RAM and you could measure solar activity from the ECC error logs
@tschenkel @faithisleaping @sundogplanets I've worked in automotive safety and we have a spreadsheet for likely error rate depending on height at the Earth's surface and the amount of memory on the MCU. I guess since these LLM processes spit out random garbage anyways the error rate doesn't matter?
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Cowboy Space (I hate their name so much) published their consolidated response a week ago but we just noticed it. EDIT: It was due at 5pm EDT today. So... I guess I have to read this shit. Swearing a lot here will get me through it.
A reminder: this is the 4th company that wants to launch fucking enormous "AI data center" satellites into sun-synchronous terminator orbits, giving Earth a ring. This particular company wants 20,000 satellites in one ring.
@sundogplanets They should make the application fee a aignificant percentage of expected revenue. Reduce the flow of bullshit.
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@klausfiend @sundogplanets Okay, I might be out of date in how these things are managed. I was thinking back to when Microsoft (I think) was bragging about their modular data centers and how they shipped everything in sealed containers and never had to have a tech on site. But it’s been a long time and I haven’t paid much attention to that stuff.
@faithisleaping @sundogplanets The DCs powering AI are quite a different beast—modular DCs are still a thing but have different economics, and in the case of a neocloud, those AI DCs are monetized by having every GPU available working at full throttle. A dead GPU means compute capacity not being sold, which is already a loss, but if you're still consuming power and/or cooling for it, additional money left on the table. It's also worth noting that some model workloads can span multiple servers, so having "holes" in the rack makes the logistics of that kind of workload more complicated (because you have to deal with latency differentials, etc., going east-west that are different going north-south.)
The economics of a neocloud DC are also why they're so terrible for electricity and water consumption: idle nodes don't generate revenue.
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Cowboy Space (I hate their name so much) published their consolidated response a week ago but we just noticed it. EDIT: It was due at 5pm EDT today. So... I guess I have to read this shit. Swearing a lot here will get me through it.
A reminder: this is the 4th company that wants to launch fucking enormous "AI data center" satellites into sun-synchronous terminator orbits, giving Earth a ring. This particular company wants 20,000 satellites in one ring.
@sundogplanets Just thinking about this from another perspective. There was that "line", I think, city that some nutters were going to build in the desert. May both those people and the Cowboy Bebop crowd both read Larry Niven's ringworld and just managed to capture enough vc to fund the prospectus?
More fool them.
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The rest of the astronomy section is pure bullshit, unadulterated by any facts or actual information.
"We will definitely work with astronomers, and we definitely won't have any reflections because our satellites are magical, we also won't have any infrared emissions, even though physics says that very hot things emit blackbody radiation. We are cowboys, not bound by mere LAWS OF PHYSICS."
@sundogplanets Now, I could believe "We will not have any reflections or IR emissions, because none of our satellites will ever be built, let alone launched."
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@sundogplanets Regarding that last point: isn't there anything that can be done from abroad to stop this madness? Why can the FCC alone decide what is appropriate to put in orbit of the whole world?
I dread the "the Americans went nuts and that's why we cannot go to space" chapter of future history books.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun. -
Sure, completely untested, brand-fucking-new company that has never built or launched a satellite. You can definitely launch 20,000 of the biggest satellites ever built.
Oh apparently their first demo mission is scheduled for OCTOBER 2026? Gosh these guys are fucking unreal. The mission is listed as "power beaming demonstration"
What does that even fucking mean? Guess they're going to fry some birds and maybe some pilots? Hm. Watch for that I guess.
Power beaming: "an old concept of collecting solar power in space with solar power satellites and transmitting it to Earth"
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Cowboy Space (I hate their name so much) published their consolidated response a week ago but we just noticed it. EDIT: It was due at 5pm EDT today. So... I guess I have to read this shit. Swearing a lot here will get me through it.
A reminder: this is the 4th company that wants to launch fucking enormous "AI data center" satellites into sun-synchronous terminator orbits, giving Earth a ring. This particular company wants 20,000 satellites in one ring.
@sundogplanets Yes, and who is going to compensate people in earth when their space junk crashes into their houses and surrounding environment and even themselves? You can bet the big space tech billionaires will deny any responsibility, as always.
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@davidtheeviloverlord @sundogplanets You _can_ do it, but the costs are (without irony, word choice intended) astronomical. You could liquid cool the inside of an orbital DC, but you'd still need a TON of surface area on external heat exchangers to passively radiate that heat away, since you can't rely on either convection or conduction—which are much much faster for heat transfer—but also aren't possible in a vacuum. A DC in space is basically the inside of a giant Yeti thermos, and that inside has an operational temperature range up to about 80C, but without cooling will easily get up to 140C or hotter—at which point stuff fails catastrophically; you have to move a lot of Joules to keep things operating in range.
Which is all to say that it's not _impossible_, but it IS nonetheless wildly impractical. But it is also calculable: DC math isn't hard, and manufacturers include power inputs and thermal outputs in their spec sheets—so omitting that seems very deliberate.
@klausfiend @davidtheeviloverlord @sundogplanets What 'would' work is the space compute concept of http://server-sky.com #ServerSky
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@lauren Let me know if you want any info or want to chat about it - there are now over 2 million satellites proposed
@sundogplanets @lauren two million! What would that do to the collision clock? A couple of days goes to... a few minutes?
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Cowboy Space (I hate their name so much) published their consolidated response a week ago but we just noticed it. EDIT: It was due at 5pm EDT today. So... I guess I have to read this shit. Swearing a lot here will get me through it.
A reminder: this is the 4th company that wants to launch fucking enormous "AI data center" satellites into sun-synchronous terminator orbits, giving Earth a ring. This particular company wants 20,000 satellites in one ring.
@sundogplanets this is just the corporate version of pump and dump, isn't it. "invest in us!" … "oops all the money's been 'spent', bye now."
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This company also posted an ex parte filing (which means they had a super special extra FCC meeting), their satellites are too fucking huge to even be physically possible. They just can't fucking do this.
My estimate from looking at this ridiculous sketch is 8x60x10m solar panels... that's a reflecting area of 4800 m^2. The International Space Station, the biggest thing in orbit, has a solar panel area of about 3400 m^2.
@sundogplanets @mastodonmigration Also, there’re potential national security / infrastructure resilience issues. Traditional data centres are mostly covered by air defense systems of the country they’re in.
These orbital data centres can literally be taken out by a handful of nuts and bolts thrown into their orbit.
The very same defense was to be used by the Soviet Union if the US were ever to put multibillion $$ laser satellites into orbit under their SDI program proposed in the 80s.
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Cowboy Space (I hate their name so much) published their consolidated response a week ago but we just noticed it. EDIT: It was due at 5pm EDT today. So... I guess I have to read this shit. Swearing a lot here will get me through it.
A reminder: this is the 4th company that wants to launch fucking enormous "AI data center" satellites into sun-synchronous terminator orbits, giving Earth a ring. This particular company wants 20,000 satellites in one ring.
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This company also posted an ex parte filing (which means they had a super special extra FCC meeting), their satellites are too fucking huge to even be physically possible. They just can't fucking do this.
My estimate from looking at this ridiculous sketch is 8x60x10m solar panels... that's a reflecting area of 4800 m^2. The International Space Station, the biggest thing in orbit, has a solar panel area of about 3400 m^2.
The FCC?
Is this the Federation of Planets, or jut the US?In which case, who gave them authority over the solar system? The United Nations? Some god? Let's see the paperwork!
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The rest of the astronomy section is pure bullshit, unadulterated by any facts or actual information.
"We will definitely work with astronomers, and we definitely won't have any reflections because our satellites are magical, we also won't have any infrared emissions, even though physics says that very hot things emit blackbody radiation. We are cowboys, not bound by mere LAWS OF PHYSICS."
@sundogplanets Also funny when they built a giant radiator whose sole purpose is to emit infrared radiation. Like, even if it somehow could break the laws of physics and not emit, that would defeat its entire point.
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The rest of the astronomy section is pure bullshit, unadulterated by any facts or actual information.
"We will definitely work with astronomers, and we definitely won't have any reflections because our satellites are magical, we also won't have any infrared emissions, even though physics says that very hot things emit blackbody radiation. We are cowboys, not bound by mere LAWS OF PHYSICS."
@sundogplanets I'm sorry you have to deal with this, and also thanks for dealing with this for all of us
I assume if they are fans of AI data centers, large portions of this bullshit report including the ridiculous satellite size have been designed by AI...? -
Oh gosh I don't know if I can actually read this. "The United States is engaged in a race for AI dominance, and as the terrestrial electric grid is overwhelmed by the demands of new data centers this race is now a race for space dominance as well"
FUCK THIS OUTRIGHT COLONIALIST DOGSHIT. WOW.
"Very little in the record disputes Cowboy Space’s qualifications"
HAHAHA that's because you haven't fucking done ANYTHING!!!
@sundogplanets talkingpointsmemo.com had a great piece today. It started off talking about why there’s such a strong backlash against data centers, but finished with the reason the Tech Lords want them in space: because they can’t handle it when county commissions and zoning boards have power over them.
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@klausfiend Data center companies are already eating that cost. They don't replace individual GPUs. They just shut off the unit and leave it be.
But that failure rate will be WAY higher with zero gravity, the heat differentials of space, and radiation.
@klausfiend @sundogplanets Sorry to ping an old thread but I just learned that intel is getting in on the grift:
They’ve utterly failed to make any headway in data center AI so now they’re advertising space grade AI in an attempt to drink from the VC firehose. And of course they’re bragging about domestic US manufacturing, too.
I can guarantee you that no one at Intel knows anything about building space grade hardware. But, hey, no one needs to care about that until after they’ve pulled a few billion in contracts.
