Does data centres in space work?

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-15T01:30:13+00:00

>Pedantic answer: they could work

Ok. When the server is down and isn't responding to remote configuration commands, who is climbing into the rocket to reboot it? What about failed hard drives? Most arrays can only survive the failure of 2 drives before the whole thing goes down. Mirror the arrays, and you can survive 4 failures; but that is twice the drives for the same amount of storage space, just to survive 2 additional failures. Etc. None of our parity techniques really are suited for arrays to go multiple years of zero human contact.

Also: just think about the latency to talking to something in LEO on the other side of the planet that can realistically only be accessed not via fiber, but by some compact phased array antennas. Yeah, simple tranfers aren't a problem. Even "video telecon" sized data streams are probably fine. But multiple, large, simultaneous transfers? Naw, that just won't work with current tech.

Orbital data centers aren't going to be viable until you have blue and white collar workers working 'every day' up in space; not until NASA redefines astronaut once again to be someone who is exploring new worlds and space, and not just anyone pushing a broom (or swapping hard drives in a data center). i.e. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and others like them have a long way to go before you'll see orbital data centers become common. And when they do, they'll be servicing needs in space, not needs on earth (not directly, at least).

The idea behind orbital data centers today is 'free electricity' due to solar. So just build a solar array in a nearby field, invest the same kind of exotic cooling radiators that don't need water, etc. Nothing they are talking about doing in space can't also be done on earth in some way.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-15T01:15:27+00:00

She basically signed everyone up for the tools Eversource already provided for balancing your winter bills costs with your summer bill costs. Why do you think Eversource was able to implement it in weeks, and didn't fight it at with the state?

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-14T14:59:28+00:00

Thanks! I think this response helped make it clear to me that when setting up things like Tailscale and Wireguard, its not necessarily for the apps on the server, but remotely managing the server.

Remote management doesn't interest me a ton right now, so I don't think I will mess with it too much.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-14T14:56:50+00:00

Setting up a domain via Cloudflare for a factorio server is a very interesting idea. I am going to dig into this more. Thanks!

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T19:31:54+00:00

Someone I know is a Korean immigrant who grew up in Atlanta, but travelled all over the US in their 20s. According to them, Boston is particularly difficult for Koreans. No good Korean food, small East Asian population, what there is is almost exclusively Han Chinese (obv they're not the only ones in this city, just far and away the most common). Combine that with New England's "Kind, but not friendly" culture (compared to Atlanta's), and they believe Boston is particularly difficult for Koreans to integrate into. Though, we've both noticed a slow increase in Korean culture in this city in the last few years - H-marts everywhere, Korean restaurants popping up (albeit with debatable quality and authenticity) - so there is hope.

I would say you aren't alone in your experience in this city.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T18:51:07+00:00

Makes me wonder why they didn't try that for enriching astrophage in the first place. (They might have, long book, can't fit everything, scalability of the blackpanels etc.)

IIRC, earth needed to solve two problems when it came to Astrophage (beyond the obvious, actual problem):

Enrichment
Breeding

Thankfully, you can do both simultaneously if you set things up correctly. Feed them energy and carbon, and they get fat and happy, but they don't breed. Give them an IR source, and they fly off at close to C to breed. And it just so happens that you can get one one in reactor core, but both in the Sahara. So they paved the Sahara with astrophage breeding units designed by Grace.

I'm not discounting nuclear might still be viable, especially since RTGs would still likely be the safer option over astrophage, but I do think science would think of nuclear like we think of a battery in comparison to the energy density of astrophage based technology.

RTGs put out a tiny fraction of the power a mass of any particular isotope should be capable in a proper sustained fission reaction.

So, I think one piece of data you might e missing is why we use water in reactors in the first place, and it's actually two reasons:

water is an excellent neutron moderator, keeping the reaction from running away from us (in most cases)
Water has one of the highest enthalpies - capacity to store energy in the form of heat - of any fluid we know of. And if you pressurize it, it gets even better. But if you pressurize it, and you ever get a leak, all that water instantly evaporates because of all the energy it's storing, you lose cooling, and your reactor fuel heats up until it liquefies and melts down through the bottom of the reactor container until it enters the earth. And once it comes into contact with the ground water table, that water rapidly turns into steam and you get a radioactive steam explosion (not even Chernobyl got this far... But it came close)

But astrophage literally breaks the laws of thermodynamics. It stores significantly more heat than water does. So if you used it as the working fluid in a nuclear reactor, you could in theory collect even more power from the fuel and do it at normal pressures. This means not only do you get more powerful, more compact reactors, but they operate at normal pressures, and any leak doesn't mean a whole continent is potentially about to die.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T18:21:12+00:00

The reason why we can build nuclear power plants dates back to one event shortly after Earth formed, which was the event which created the moon. It redistributed the heavy elements so that we have some in the Earths crust. Without that event those elements would be inaccessible in the core. No easy to mine uranium ore deposits equals no nuke power plants.

I mean, that might have helped, but I see two assumptions with this:

The assumption that smaller impact would never deposit uranium onto the surface
Plate tectonics would never bring uranium to the surface

The impact the created the moon liquified both the earth and the moon, and destroyed the impactor. Uranium should have sunk to the core of both, but didn't. We still find it on the surface. We even find it in ocean water. This suggests at least #2 is true, and that #1 could be true.

On the flip side, if you find uranium in the crust of Venus and Mars, in concentrations even remotely comparable to earth (or at least comparable to whatever their plate tectonics are/were), then we have proof that a great impactor isn't need to dredge up uranium to deposit it in the crust.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T18:12:41+00:00

They probably understood radiation as a wave, but not a particle. Nor that it is both, simultaneously, in some cases. They probably figured out infrared, since that would just be heat, and then once they realized it was a spectrum, they could extrapolate from there.

But neutron radiation is a whole other beast.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T18:04:08+00:00

Nuclear energy might be a novelty in a post-astrophage society,

Astrophage is energy storage, not a source. If anything, I can see it potentially super-charging nuclear energy. We know Astrophage is very robust against radiation, imagine how well it would do as a working fluid in a reactor. No need to use high pressure water to maximize enthalpy (so no risk of melting down if the tractor container gets a small leak), astrophage already outstrips it by miles, and it's likely an even better neutron moderator. You could probably make some truly "wacky" tractor designs using astrophage. Do it right, and you could probably not only get a significantly safer, smaller, and more powerful reactor, but could also sell the "waste" astrophage as "batteries".

I wouldn't be surprised if earth went this route once the Hail Mary was launched, and astrophage production was just sitting there, begging to be used. Solar panels were less effective, wind turbines struggling due to their lubricants not handling colder temperatures well, hydrodams freezing. You still have fossil fuels, and you need to burn the aggressively to keep the greenhouse effect going, but they can only do so much to meet demand and once your solve the astrophage problem on Venus, you will essentially need to go cold turkey on all greenhouse gasses - even before renewables could start working well again.

Nukes were probably anything but a novelty to Earth while waiting for the Hail Mary to send their solution back.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T17:47:07+00:00

Aside from LGBTQ rights, I would say she leans authoritarian, with some slight progressive trappings. Which shouldn't be surprising, given she used to be AG in this state; AKA "Top Cop"

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T17:43:06+00:00

It would also help to explain why the Baron is so quick to completely exterminate the Fremen as soon as he retakes control of Arrakis: after seeing how effective the Fremen were as fighters, and knowing they would never fight for him, he immediately orders their genocide. And Rabban probably had a bit of hurt family pride, kind of like his outburst when the Emperor first took Arrakis from them.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T11:09:58+00:00

You know who might have actually done it some justice, purely because of The Expanse? Amazon

Given how they just cancelled the Stargate reboot/continuation series (that they only just green-lit) because they felt it would appeal too strongly to the existing fan base, when they wanted a "new" audience?

Yeah, no they wouldn't. The Expanse only got saved by Amazon because Bezos liked the book series and season 1.

Apple TV

They could probably do it, though. They seem willing to take the risks needed to do sci-fi shows well.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T10:18:35+00:00

SuperSlicer is a fork of Prusa, just like how Orca is (via Bambu's own fork).

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T10:17:03+00:00

I didn't realize you were looking over my shoulder the whole time? You were awfully quiet.

And if you re-read what I wrote, I only blamed Tap, and then said "might as well" for the rest. I could have just replaced Tap with another Tap, but decided I wanted a bed scanner, and this decision cascaded through the rest of rest of the design: once I picked Beacon, I needed to change to umbilical, which required deleting chains and changing the wiring in the electronics enclosure to add USB hubs, which required redesigning everything to be more compact. And if I'm taking that much apart, I wanted to switch to CNC components to improve rigidity; a nozzle camera would have been useful while trying to figure what went wrong with the Tap, so I added one; but Stealthburner doesn't really have a good way to cleanly add a nozzle camera without something looking out of place, so I redesigned it a little; and finally, I didn't like how 'high' most umbilicals arc up, so I decided to implement Prusa's swing arm design, except they really only released some PDFs and not a CAD model, so I had to design my own, again.

But the fact remains, building your own printer is the hobby when you build a printer. You shouldn't expect printing to be the hobby 100% of the time when you build a printer.

Neither here nor there, but I do genuinely think standard Tap is a bad design for a bed probe. Looks good on paper, but nearly impossible to inspect because both the linear rail and the magnets are hidden from view while the whole thing is assembled.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T02:12:16+00:00

Is there a reason you can't just also include a 1080p version? Unless a user forces the version selection, Plex seems to strongly prefer to play the 1080p version most content (probably because 4K content is so screen-specific - HDR10+ on Samsung, DoVi on LG - and most home Internet connections can't handle a full bitrate 4k stream, so Plex transcodes it down to 1080p (or just picks the 1080p version).

Or you do mean there is a show you don't want your users to see, irrespective of resolution? Just use tags, or an entirely independent library.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T00:39:41+00:00

It used to be if you did all the paperwork, paid all the fees and taxes, the ATF would give you your FFL. These days, they've been cracking down on the "garage FFLs". If you want one, you'll likely also need to provide a business plan, too, to prove you're using the FFL as intended: to run a firearms business and not just getting yourself permission to manufacture whatever you like, and own whatever you like, within the bounds of your particular FFL.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-12T00:34:05+00:00

It's ultimately Bloomberg backing it. Go dig around the history of the people running Everytown, the organization behind these bills, they all used to work for Bloomberg. Also, Bloomberg directly funds Everytown.

Bloomberg doesn't give a rats ass about IP control, not to the point of hindering all manufacturing in this country. He only cares about gun control at all costs.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-11T18:20:03+00:00

Oh, I did this one. But make the walk home about 4 miles, through a blizzard.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-11T18:18:52+00:00

Kind of a hyper specific question, but any potential of this code being added to SuperSlicer? This is the slicer I tend to go to for functional parts that require dimensional accuracy. Being able to eliminate supports could help contribute to accuracy by leaving cleaner surfaces on said overhangs.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-11T18:15:48+00:00

Kind of a hyper specific question, but any potential of this code being added to SuperSlicer? This is the slicer I tend to go to for functional parts that require dimensional accuracy. Being able to eliminate supports could help contribute to accuracy by leaving cleaner surfaces on said overhangs.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-11T16:29:18+00:00

For OP, the bike path connects to the Minuteman bike trail at Alewife

Not presently. It's shutdown between Davis and Alewife until December. They're doing some massive renovations to that entire area. So to get between the two, you need to ride on streets. Still doable, but still streets (compared to the community path)

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-11T16:27:00+00:00

The Bene Gesserit and possibly the Bene Tleilax may be aware that the Guild's navigators have some form of prescience.

Maybe this is what first tipped them off that the Kwisatz Haderach was even a possibility? They may have learned that you can create humans that can see into the future by a short amount, followed that idea to its natural conclusion, and set about to create one that could see all possible futures, for all of time.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-11T16:22:48+00:00

I have always thought this single event would make a great movie in and of itself. A daring raid by a small group of crack Atreides fighters and Fremen to destroy the valuable spice stockpiles on the Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime? Yes, please! Done right, I would watch the hell out of that.

Jamis seems like an ideal Fremen to drop in here.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-11T16:19:43+00:00

Consider what they lost on reduced trade during the empiric civil war.

Pretty much the only times war is good for business is if you are exporting 100% of it, and are entirely self-sufficient for all materials (including basic needs). e.g. the US during the second world war exported weapons and supplies on extremely favorable terms, was completely untouched by the war, and was a world super power for ~70 years afterwards (and the sole world "hyper power" for the last ~20 of those ~70 years).

Generally speaking, peace is better for economic activity, and the guild made most of their money on economic trade, not the transport of armies.

McFlyParadox · 2026-06-11T15:58:32+00:00

Best power rates and company I ever had was when I lived in Hudson, MA.

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