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Forums - General - Why We Should Move AI Data Centers Into Space

Conina 7 hours ago
CaptainExplosion said:

First, here's an informative article about the advantages of putting data centers in space, as well as the challenges of doing so.

Having looked into it, I say we move data centers into space anyway. It's better that they're up there instead of wasting space and resources on Earth.

It would be wasting a lot more of earth's resources to build those "space data centers" + bring them into space from earth + maintain them in space.



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Zkuq 5 hours ago
HoloDust said:
CaptainExplosion said:

Won't that heat the ocean?

It would, right around data center's exhausts - but for 1 cubic km of static water to be heated additional 1 degree Celsius in a day you would apparently need ~50GW output, which is 50x of what currently largest data center is capable of consuming. And sea is not static water, so it gets spread out quickly. China has already started doing this.

Or you can build them under residential areas and use excess heat for heating (Finland is doing this).

I thought we were utilizing district heating to move the heat rather than underground data centers, but admittedly I haven't been following the news that closely. Still, I don't remember seeing any news about underground data centers - it's always above the ground, and we seem to have a lot of news about new data centers these days.



CaptainExplosion 3 hours ago
Zkuq said:
HoloDust said:

It would, right around data center's exhausts - but for 1 cubic km of static water to be heated additional 1 degree Celsius in a day you would apparently need ~50GW output, which is 50x of what currently largest data center is capable of consuming. And sea is not static water, so it gets spread out quickly. China has already started doing this.

Or you can build them under residential areas and use excess heat for heating (Finland is doing this).

I thought we were utilizing district heating to move the heat rather than underground data centers, but admittedly I haven't been following the news that closely. Still, I don't remember seeing any news about underground data centers - it's always above the ground, and we seem to have a lot of news about new data centers these days.

And about what a detriment they are to people and animals.

How would district heating help any of the problems with data centers?



Zkuq 1 hour ago
CaptainExplosion said:
Zkuq said:

I thought we were utilizing district heating to move the heat rather than underground data centers, but admittedly I haven't been following the news that closely. Still, I don't remember seeing any news about underground data centers - it's always above the ground, and we seem to have a lot of news about new data centers these days.

And about what a detriment they are to people and animals.

How would district heating help any of the problems with data centers?

I don't think they're much of a problem to people here. They're usually built far enough from people, I think, and it's a relatively cool climate here anyway. The only major downside of data centers getting publicity here is the potential to increase electricity prices, and even that's just potential so far - not enough data centers to have much effect yet, although there's an initiative to tackle that too. Your mileage may vary, of course, but that's how it seems to be over here.

They're definitely a detriment to nature, but I reckon at least here they don't particularly stand out from other development (at least yet).

District heating helps with the heat island effect, I would imagine, since heat is moved where it's needed instead of left to dissipate into the surrounding nature. It also reduces the need for other methods of heating, which requires energy.