[Beowulf] Server Sky - Internet and computation in orbit

[Hearns, John]

> 3) does it really save anything to put the computation in orbit? As much as I love computing in space (particularly deep space), if you had a solar powered conventional data center on > the ground and a fat comm pipe to those third world countries, wouldn't that work as well?  The solar plant on the ground will see about 1/3 the solar power as one in the right orbit > (which may not be stable, see #2), but mass to orbit is expensive, so why not put all those solar cells to work on the earth's surface, rather than spending energy to put them into>  orbit.


Indeed.
The correct location for the Exascale HPC Datacentre of the future is of course the Moon.
For the very good reason that we all wanted to be astronauts as little boys and girls, right?
And we all wanted to work with Barbara Bain in a skin tight jumpsuit.
http://www.retronaut.com/2012/12/publicity-stills-for-space-1999-year-2-barbara-bain-in-costume-as-dr-helena-russell-md/
(for the girls read Martin Landau).


Or could it just be that the PHB's get to blast off all those pesky sysadmins to the Moon and conveniently 'forget' to
send the return flight? Just a six monthly Progress ship stacked with pizza and Jolt cola.

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