• brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    351·
    3 months ago

    They’re also talking about data centers in space, yet are too cheap to use anything but evaporative cooling + supplemental gas generators on Earth.

    I did some math on, amongst other things, launch costs for an Earth-data center sized installation, or the area needed to radiatively cool it, and it is fun:

    https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/heatrad.php

    See that power of four? Areas get very large, like kilometers wide, if you want your coolant below a typical 300K (~30C), and apparently no one told Bezos that little detail.

    Those space construction startups know what they’re doing. They’re selling billionaires a bridge to nowhere; and it’s working.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      They’re selling billionaires a bridge to nowhere; and it’s working.

      Look, I’m not saying it’s a good thing. In fact, it would be an insanely wasteful use of resources, labor, energy, etc.

      That said, folks are all about “eat the rich” and this may very well be the closest thing to that.

    • pivot_root@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      They’re selling billionaires a bridge to nowhere; and it’s working.

      That’s just wealth redistribution /s

    • ulterno@programming.devEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      Those space construction startups know what they’re doing. They’re selling billionaires a bridge to nowhere; and it’s working.

      Guess I should have gone CHA instead of INT.
      I might have gotten some of that billionaire money to buy more RAM.

    • psud@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      So for a kilowatt and 300K with a poor quality radiator (0.8)

      Area = 1000/(0.8*5.670373x10^-8*30^4)

      =1000/367.4401704

      ≈2.72m^2

      So using the approximation of 1kW/m^2 of solar, you need on the order of 2.7x the area of solar for radiators

      That doesn’t seem too bad, and is on par with what the ISS has. The radiators on ISS have emissivity about 0.91

      Ed. With the same quality of radiator on the ISS it’s about 2.4*solar kilowatts

  • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zoneEnglish
    42·
    3 months ago

    What’s intelligent about getting deep into debt and using up years of your life to get into niche work you can only do in a handful of locations, if you’re lucky?

    • orgrinrt@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      Sometimes we don’t value stable career or steady income as highly as other pursuits.

      I wouldn’t say it’s not intelligent. Just different priorities.

      I admire anyone brave and idealistic enough to commit to academia or culture or any similarly less lucrative and extremely uncertain path. Takes some resilience and big balls. You are almost guaranteed to lose a lot of the comforts available to others with that. And yet, they still do it. And we are all better for it. The world is better for it.

      • Holytimes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        11·
        3 months ago

        What you described pretty much fits the very definition of dumb. Bravery very frequently is the exact opposite of intelligence.

        That’s why you should never tell anyone the odds cuz then they might not be brave enough to take the risk.

        If they know the odds and do it anyways then they’re dumb. But also fucking hats off to him. Their balls are the size of Saturn. And that deserves respect

        • orgrinrt@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          While I don’t agree, I’ll concede I might be in the minority with this stand. But I don’t really believe in a universal intelligence in the first place. There are several, and not all of them are self-serving or marked by the traditionally associated emotionless calculations. There’s emotional intelligence. Social intelligence. And so on.

          I don’t pretend to be a philosopher or a psychologist to say what they all are, what they even are if you get down to it, but I do know there’s intelligence in caring for others. There’s intelligence in many kinds of sacrifice too. They just aren’t the classical kind of universal intelligence, because that is defined by self-serving “cold facts” and a fragile attempt at realizing an objective world and objective stance on it, which one can never truly reach or possess. If something like that even is possible.

          I stand by my original comment, and I’ll be a bit sad to learn if I’m the odd one out with that take, but I also think these are the kind of things philosophers ought to talk about and not me. What do I know? Maybe my view is distorted by idealism and good expectations, faith in people and the world, that may well be unsubstantiated and entirely delusional.

        • howrar@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          You’ve basically just re-defined intelligence as selfishness.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      depends on the field, Most people earning a phd can at least find a job eventhough it might not be the one you want. cant say the same for a BS, MS holders they have a much harder time, because employers are cheapskate.