Because when things are getting built that obviously should not work, in one's view of the world, it threatens that view of the world. Finding out that your common sense and understating of basic physics and economics has a sizable hole is pretty unpleasant for most people.

But if the project fails, then the view of the world is proved correct again, which feels moderately pleasant.

> Like they have a personally vested interest in ensuring their opinions on failure are correct?

I haven't commented on this topic before (here or elsewhere) but I don't understand your surprise at people being critical. Everyone has a vested interest in keeping the planet usable. We could try lots of things in space, like agriculture or power production. It takes a lot of fuel to push a usable kilogram of stuff into a low orbit (laser propulsion and spin launches aren't quite there yet), so moving operations into orbit has various major downsides. So long as nobody states an upside, yeah, my mind is quite blown about wasting investor money on this. Even when not considering the opportunity cost of that used money (alternative positive uses), it seems like burning the equivalent amount of cash in a bonfire or otherwise disappearing the money would be a lesser evil

>... orbital data centers...

>... but here we are, they are flying them up to space and presumably, will start working soon.

No, this isn't "here we are". This is not an orbital data center, this is just something that will test TPU cooling functionality in orbit for only 15 minutes at a time.

The hardest thing about AI datacenters is power. The second hardest thing is cooling. All of these are physical challenges and exponentially harder in space.

So why do it? Because datacenter regulations on earth are becoming a referendum by proxy on AI. "Texas has no jurisdiction in low earth orbit!" is the general idea. Critics point out that this is a transparent move to moot the argument over AI, and that it doesn't even work in principle, due to above mentioned physics.

It’s simply a stupid idea that indeed will not work, and this little tech demo is mostly a proof of that. It’s awful to many people, especially engineers, to witness incompetence, waste, and inefficiency. Especially when we’re talking about investments of billions of dollars and orbital launches.

Oh I'm just against it because I love the night sky and I don't want it littered with even more trash from obscenely rich American oligarchs. This tech doesn't help me, or anyone that is not in power. Instead it (and light pollution, but that at least not everywhere on the planet) destroys one of the few things that is there, commonly available for everyone to enjoy: the majestic view of the night sky.

Everything about technological progress is like this. It props up their ego, and they risk nothing. The man in the arena is always dangerously close to being the villain.

Actually, some of us predicted exactly what’s about to happen: these companies will launch a handful of GPUs into space, declare that it’s “working”, and then continue to build out terrestrial data centers at orders of magnitude faster rate.

No one is saying it’s impossible to put operating GPUs in space. People are saying that the economics of this make zero sense, and there seem to be hard physical limits for how much you can change parts of the reasons why. This test does absolutely nothing to disprove that.

Spend the money on something we already know works that will help people today, right now.

Soon the musical chairs game will come to a screeching halt. Interest rates are skyrocketing and not even a Presidential decree will make them come down.

To me it's clear the U.S. is heading for a default. Instead of toning down the deficit Trump made it much worse with his "Big Beautiful Bill" and is bankrupting the country.

What happens next is anyone's guess, but it won't be pretty.

It's an offensively stupid idea. Anyone trying to sell you on it thinks you're stupid.

Look at the article: they threw 4 cards in a box and launched it. It works for 15 minutes and then it has to snooze for who-knows-how-long.

Because it’s so fucking stupid for the stated benefits that you get

- people getting nerd sniped and explaining why it’s wrong

- people who assume it isn’t wrong given the level of competence these groups have demonstrated already and are incensed by what they feel are bald faced lies to pump up stock prices like has been done before

- people who think this is some conspiracy(rightly or wrongly) to surreptitiously get weapon platforms or other support for weapon platforms into space.

The majority of tradeoffs for data centers make them always better on the ground. Just due to maintenance and heat alone.

> There are many people on HN that despise it and say it will not and will never work, but here we are, they are flying them up to space and presumably, will start working soon.

This is the one Google says they can run in 15 minute bursts and I’ve yet to find where they document what the cooldown period is before they can run again.

Also 99% of people saying it’ll never work are talking economically, not that theoretically you could get something up that works in the laws of physics.

Elon Musk supports it and will be the main beneficiary if it succeeds. That's it.