<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div>Hi folks,</div><div><br></div><div>Is there a link to the underlying assumptions in for this "data centres in space” story or the report?</div><div><br></div><div>The press release mentioned <i>solar powerplants generating several hundred megawatts</i>. That would require a <i>massive</i> amount of solar!</div><div><br></div><div>For context, this list here shows the largest solar plants in the US, as of June 2021:</div><div><br></div><div></div><div><a href="https://list.solar/plants/largest-plants/solar-plants-usa/">https://list.solar/plants/largest-plants/solar-plants-usa/</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>Even the smallest one, kicking out 200 Megawatts has a surface areas of 5.1 square kilometers, and it only goes upward from there.</div><div><br></div><div>For this to be plausible, you’d need panels to be orders of magnitude more efficient than they are on land when in space, even before you think about how heavy it would be get multiple square kilometres of solar panel into orbit.</div><div><br></div><div>C</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>Chris Adams<br><br>Executive Director<br><br>w: thegreenwebfoundation.org<br>e: chris@thegreenwebfoundation.org<br>t: @mrchrisadams<br><br>German Office<br>Naunynstrasse 40<br>10999 Berlin<br>Germany<br><br>See our contact page for more details</div><div><a href="https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/contact/">https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/contact/</a><br><br>Book a short call with me to discuss something.<br><a href="https://cal.com/mrchrisadams">https://cal.com/mrchrisadams</a></div></div></div><div>
<meta charset="UTF-8"><div>Chris Adams<br><br>Executive Director<br><br>w: thegreenwebfoundation.org<br>e: chris@thegreenwebfoundation.org<br>t: @mrchrisadams<br><br>German Office<br>Naunynstrasse 40<br>10999 Berlin<br>Germany<br><br>See our contact page for more details</div><div><a href="https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/contact/">https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/contact/</a><br><br>Book a short call with me to discuss something.<br><a href="https://cal.com/mrchrisadams">https://cal.com/mrchrisadams</a><br><br></div>
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<div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>On 20. Apr 2023, at 07:43, Daniel Schien <Daniel.Schien@bristol.ac.uk> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div>
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<div style="" dir="auto">I assume any object in orbit will be hidden from the sun some of the time. So, the machines will require some pretty big battery to go up with them. </div>
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<div style="" dir="auto">I'd like to also know what the launch cost is. </div>
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<div style="" dir="auto">Tom Segert estimates in his LinkedIn post, for a<span style="font-size: medium; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;"> 100kg satellite payload:</span></div>
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<div style="" dir="auto">"TL:DR ~57 ton CO2e for a typical ESA satellite (including Ariane 6 launch), <15t CO2e for a satellite built in a factory and launched with a re-usable rocket."</div>
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<div style="" dir="auto">Depending on the type of server that should go up there, this is a fair amount of carbon to offset from brighter sunlight.</div>
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<div style="" dir="auto">The article also gets the carbon footprint wrong:</div>
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<div style="" dir="auto">"<span style="color: rgb(25, 25, 25); font-family: MajritTxRoman, serif; font-size: 19px; letter-spacing: -0.01904px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;">Data centers are big energy consumers – between
2% and 3% of all global consumption – a rate that is doubling every year."</span></div>
<div style="" dir="auto"><span style="color: rgb(25, 25, 25); font-family: MajritTxRoman, serif; font-size: 19px; letter-spacing: -0.01904px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;"><br>
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<div style="" dir="auto"><span style="color: rgb(25, 25, 25); font-family: MajritTxRoman, serif; font-size: 19px; letter-spacing: -0.01904px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;">The latest was IEA estimating it to be around 220-320
TWh (out of 30,000) in 2021 data and growing between 10-60% over 6 years in total (so let's than 10 CAGR). But it's certainly not doubling every year. That's just completely wrong.</span></div>
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<h3 style="font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span>Daniel</span><span> </span><span>Schien</span></h3><div style="font-size: 11px; margin: 0px; line-height: 22px;">
<span>Senior Lecturer in Computer Science</span></div><div style="font-size: 11px; font-weight: 500; margin: 0px; line-height: 22px;">
<span>Department of Computer Science</span><span> | </span><span>University of Bristol</span></div>
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<span><b>Submit software engineering project ideas for 2022</b></span></div>
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<td><a style="font-size: 11px;"><span>bris.ac.uk/software-engineering</span></a><br>
<span style="font-size:9pt">Watch: </span><a href="https://youtu.be/lU-ZsBDFWDI" data-auth="NotApplicable" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-linkindex="0" style="font-size: 14.67px; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0px; background-color: white;"><span lang="fr" style="font-size:9pt;margin:0px">https://youtu.be/lU-ZsBDFWDI</span></a></td>
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<td width="30"><span style="height:8px;width:683px;box-sizing:border-box !important"><span style="font-size:9pt"><b>Book a meeting</b>: </span><a href="https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/OfficeHours@bristol.ac.uk/bookings/" data-auth="NotApplicable"><span style="font-size:9pt">https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/OfficeHours@bristol.ac.uk/booki</span></a></span></td>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> E-impact <e-impact-bounces@ietf.org> on behalf of Vint Cerf <vint=40google.com@dmarc.ietf.org><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, April 20, 2023 2:16:38 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> tom@evslin.com <tom@evslin.com><br>
<b>Cc:</b> Michael Richardson <mcr@sandelman.ca>; starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>; e-impact@ietf.org <e-impact@ietf.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [E-impact] [Starlink] DataCenters in Space (was Re: fiber IXPs in space)</font>
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<div dir="ltr">O&M will be a bear
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<div dir="ltr" class="x_gmail_attr">On Wed, Apr 19, 2023 at 9:13 PM Tom Evslin via Starlink <<a href="mailto:starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net">starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net</a>> wrote:<br>
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I think space-based data centers will be the rule rather than the exception. Wrote about that a couple of years ago although, as usual, things have not happened as quickly as I predicted
<a href="https://blog.tomevslin.com/2021/07/computing-clouds-in-orbit-a-possible-roadmap.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">
https://blog.tomevslin.com/2021/07/computing-clouds-in-orbit-a-possible-roadmap.html</a><br>
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-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Starlink <<a href="mailto:starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net" target="_blank">starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net</a>> On Behalf Of Michael Richardson via Starlink<br>
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2023 7:35 PM<br>
To: starlink <<a href="mailto:starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net" target="_blank">starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net</a>>;
<a href="mailto:e-impact@ietf.org" target="_blank">e-impact@ietf.org</a><br>
Subject: [Starlink] DataCenters in Space (was Re: fiber IXPs in space)<br>
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I saw this reported in BIS-Spaceflight.<br>
(I'm usually a few months behind in reading it) I like the "first objective"!<br>
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<a href="https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/worldwide/space/press-release/ascend-thales-alenia-space-lead-european-feasibility-study-data" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/worldwide/space/press-release/ascend-thales-alenia-space-lead-european-feasibility-study-data</a><br>
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Cannes, November 14, 2022 – Thales Alenia Space, the joint company between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), has been chosen by the European Commission to lead the ASCEND (Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emission and Data sovereignty) feasibility
study for data centers in orbit, as part of Europe’s vast Horizon Europe research program.<br>
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Digital technology’s expanding environmental footprint is becoming a major<br>
challenge: the burgeoning need for digitalization means that data centers in Europe and around the world are growing at an exponential pace, which in turn has a critical energy and environmental impact.<br>
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The first objective of this study will be to assess if the carbon emissions from the production and launch of these space infrastructures will be significantly lower than the emissions generated by ground-based data centers, therefore contributing to the achievement
of global carbon neutrality. The second objective will be to prove that it is possible to develop the required launch solution and to ensure the deployment and operability of these spaceborne data centers using robotic assistance technologies currently being
developed in Europe, such as the EROSS IOD demonstrator.<br>
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This project is expected to demonstrate to which extent space-based data centers would limit the energy and environmental impact of their ground counterparts, thus allowing major investments within the scope of Europe’s Green Deal, possibly justifying the development
of a more climate-friendly, reusable heavy launch vehicle. Europe could thus regain its leadership in space transport and space logistics, as well as the assembly and operations of large infrastructures in orbit.<br>
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