There are currently about 12600 satellites in orbit. As a result on average every day 3 fall out of space, dumping metals and other nasties into the upper atmosphere.
If we continue that rate of satellite loss, 1 in 4200, and extrapolate it to 1,000,000. That would be ~238 satellites PER DAY, falling out of the sky and spreading the materials they are made up of in the upper atmosphere. With some more substantial chunks hitting the surface, and possibly people.
That's just bonkers
1/n
@quixoticgeek these techbros Gluttonaires have a serious case of Ai psychosis.
@quixoticgeek Techbros finally inventing dial-up speed Internet. What a boon for those of us fed up with high speed data transfer.
What’s even more bonkers is managing to launch 1,000.000 satellites 🛰️
@quixoticgeek and the rest of the rubbish floating around hitting other satellites
@quixoticgeek I’m pretty sure there was a Star Trek episode where a species had so polluted their low orbit they couldn’t access space anymore. We’re well on our way there already, even without this latest musk brain fart.
@Nicovel0 @quixoticgeek Wall-E was a bit of a hint too, and might be more suitable to certain critical thinking skill levels.
This of course completely overlooks all other practicalities of orbital datacentres, that makes putting high power computing in orbit. Which for a summary include: too much radiation noise making the systems unstable (see Wikipedia for "single even upset"), cooling when you have to dump heat into a vacuum, low data bandwidth (compared to a fibre on earth), latency, and shear fucking cost.
It's an absolutely fucking stupid idea. And I'm angry I have to spend my Sunday debunking this shit.
2/2
@quixoticgeek This has got to be driven primarily by jurisdictional and regulatory concerns. "No one can stop my spicy chatbot... in... space..."
@sdbbp nah, Charlie Stross sums it up nicely, This is about a pending IPO and a need to inflate the plausibility of space x
@quixoticgeek Oh, sure. I am totally with Charlie's explanation as the proximate cause. But I'm thinking about what's actually valuable to these people in ever realizing the ideas.
@quixoticgeek
The cooling is manageable (the solar panels have a back side)
The low bandwidth and high latency are probably tractable for many AI and training purposes.
The whole point of the proposal, is to reduce the cost to orbit by another factor 100, just like space x did the first time, so complaining about cost misses the entire point. (Whether they can do it, I don't know!)
However. I don't see a good solution for radiation hardening. We have 15 pounds of shielding per square inch...
It only remains to be seen whether we destroy our potential future as a space-faring species by shrouding our planet in an impenetrable layer of space junk, or if we manage to ruin our climate, and thus economy and lastly civilization, before it comes to that.
@quixoticgeek it’s such an obviously stupid idea you wonder who benefits from proposing it. And I can only assume it’s both NVIDIA and SpaceX are pushing this obviously incompetent logic that can be destroyed by a high school physics student with 2 napkins and a grubby pencil.
Postscript: and before the cult of space Karen start with the "so you're an expert in orbital computing this week are you?" Well. One of my first jobs out of uni involved designing an onboard control system for a satellite. My design has literally been to space. I know what I'm talking about on this one.
@quixoticgeek he's desperate for new money, so he needs a new fairy tale people will invest in...
@quixoticgeek
Thank you for giving us your Insight on this complex matter I was as ignorant as a 2-year-old child when it comes down to this subject now I'm in the loop
🦋💙❤️💋 #Lobi 💙💕🌹💐💙🦋
@quixoticgeek
As someone else who worked on space electronics for a decade, I can affirm that yes, this person does indeed know what they are talking about.
@quixoticgeek All I understood is that by 2050 we must start fracking in the upper atmosphere to extract the valuable metal oxides deposited there by the burned up satellites. /s
Here's a sample from the latest Epstein emails dump
@gbargoud @davidgerard oh right. You know using a whole sentence is a really good way to avoid ambiguity
@quixoticgeek uuuuggh, didn’t this debunking dance already occur like a month ago when Sam Altman or some other idiot brought it up?!
@c0dec0dec0de welcome to tech bro whackamole
@quixoticgeek be better if it were a bit more literal, might do them a bit of good to get a bop on the head with a soft mallet
@quixoticgeek There's also the Kessler Syndrome cascading debris risk that the boffins at ESA and EUMETSAT were worrying about 15 years ago (yes, I worked at the latter in Darmstadt).
Once we get there it's goodbye LEO for thé foreseeable future.
@davep @quixoticgeek
The low orbit cleans itself up.
The high orbits are so insanely big that there's a fair amount of margin before we'd get even 1/10 of a percent of mission failures.
@davep good bye orbit. Who's gonna want to risk launching through a debris shell to get into orbit? What radio signals are we gonna get through the noise?
@quixoticgeek @davep not just radio seems like it is already interfering with earth based observation, large debris fields just making it worse.
@quixoticgeek Yup, that too. Russian roulette for every launch isn't a great idea.
@quixoticgeek @cstross exactly my point:
"oh these rich people know better than us"
no they fucking don't - money makes you stupid - they all decide that they were brilliant to get some money and promptly stop having any critical thinking skills
(i've spent too long around these kind of people)
@quixoticgeek you hardly need to be an expert to realise this is a terrible idea
"AI" data centres don't make sense before you launch them into orbit
@Dangerous_beans I'm just preempting some of the replies.
@quixoticgeek yeah. That mob are tiring
