Fitz Thiar: Thinking For The Impatient

I’ve seen a plethora of “5-minute experts” pontificating on “Data Centers In SPAAAAAAAACCE Space”, touting it as the solution to AI’s power and cooling needs.

Notably, the idea has gained considerable credibility since it was vomited up by the World’s Richest Idiot, Elon Musk. Perhaps this was an attempt to shift the narrative away from the shitshow that is Tesla, his begging to party with Epstein, and that none of his promises with regards to technology, or Mars colonization, ever bear fruit.

Clearly, his ketamine induced halucinations genius, or Groks, doesn’t extend to basic thermodynamics as my favourite science educator and Temu Thor explains in his video “Space Data Centers Are Dumb“.

Even if we could overcome all of the issues raised by Kyle (cost, size, power generation and heat dissipation), one thing I don’t see many people talking about when it comes to the infeasibility of “Data Centers in SPAAAAAAAACE” (yes, it’s a Muppet Show reference) is perhaps the biggest one of all – data transfer speeds.

The current world record for the fastest data connection between a satellite in orbit and a receiving station on the ground was achieved by the experimental TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) system, designed and developed by NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory.

TBIRD uses an infrared laser light to transmit data and downlinked 4.8 terabytes of error-free data in 4 minutes and 57 seconds on a 200-gigabit-per-second data downlink.

That is under perfect experimental conditions.

Transmissions from satellites to other satellites are also, well, piss poor.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have accomplished a significant leap in high-speed data transmission, as high as 424Gbit/s across a 53-km turbulent free space optical link. As a Gigabyte is equal to 8 Gigabits, 424Gbit/s is equivalent to 53GB/s.

You see, modern data centers with optical fibre rolling right up on in there can have speeds up to 400 Gb/s, we’re close on 800 with 1.6 Tb/s on the horizon.

To put it bluntly, unless we run a massive Ethernet cable up to each and every one of these data centers, then there is no way we’ll be able to transfer data at the speeds required to make them useful.

AI is data hungry, and as it’s forcibly incorporated into everything, and if you’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, that means they’re going to process the data for everything – driving your car, performing surgery, curing cancer, being an interactive sexbot for incels, they will do it ALL, baby!

If this comes to pass, then we will require even faster speeds than 1.6 Tb/s to and from the data center. We can’t rely on the theoretical and considerably slower speeds that only work under perfect weather conditions.

I hate to bring up Elon again, but if Starlink has taught me anything, it’s that your sexbot will lose connection every time it rains. But hey, at least the dish will get wet…