r/nextfuckinglevel • u/InsaneMocktail • 12h ago

NASA released the clearest images of Mars

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18.5k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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u/Chadbutler11c 12h ago

Imagine how many warehouses and data centers we could build there!

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u/Dukkiegamer 12h ago

Yes! Except they need water or something else to cool them down.

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u/Particular-Sport-627 12h ago

average temp on mars is -80 fahrenheit, perfect place for them data centers

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u/ElijahQuoro 11h ago edited 7h ago

It’s even colder in outer space. Mars atmosphere is very sparse (0.6% of Earth pressure on ground level) so you can’t use its atmosphere effectively for cooling purposes.

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u/PM_ME_UR_HIP_DIMPLES 11h ago

I know far too much about Mars because Andy Weir is a nerd that writes good books

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u/Mycroft033 7h ago

Ooooh love me some Andy Weir

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u/pichael289 2h ago

One thing the Martian got wrong is what the guy above you is getting at, that storm at the beginning can't possibly happen. Mars doesn't have wind like earth does. There might be a way to leverage this for some other form of cooling, some kind of much more fragile heat sink that can also radiate away the heat maybe. Mars has an absolute abundance of a resource we compete over here, land. Musk could build giant heat sinks and configure them so we can see his big dumb face though a backyard telescope.

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u/AlternatinCurrently 4h ago

Andy Caps was preferred for his fries.

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u/Timmetie 1h ago edited 10m ago

Andy weir writes good books but he's a bit of an idiot when it comes to science, the fact Mars pretty much doesn't have an atmosphere debunks many things about his book.

I know far too much about Mars

If you think you know it from reading Andy Weir, then no you don't.

If you want to read about Mars from a popular writer that does know a bit of science, try Zach Weinersmith's "A city on Mars", he's the author of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comics and a pretty fun writer.

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u/LevelZeroDM 11h ago

There's even less atmosphere in outer space.

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u/XavierScorpionIkari 9h ago

That’s why a restaurant on the Moon is a terrible idea. While the view is amazing, the atmosphere is nonexistent.

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u/INeverSaySS 9h ago

Sigh, upvoted.

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u/NachoWindows 8h ago

But do they serve Moon Pies?

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u/explosivelydehiscent 7h ago

taps temple
That's why I only patronize food trucks on the moon

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u/ElijahQuoro 7h ago

Exactly. The sentence was meant to highlight that there are places with lower temperature, it doesn’t make them a good choice.

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u/SuspiciouslySuspect2 10h ago

You can however use the frozen CO2 at the poles. Sealing the center is a prerequisite anyways and all you need is a steady supply of crushed dry ice, you could run it for centuries without issue.

Space isn't actually that cold, because radiating heat is very hard. The only reason building on mars would actually be hard it because it's far away.

Data centers are fine if we just *force them to be self-sufficient. Their own carbon-neutral power and own internal refrigerants, not (initially) cheap fossil fuels and water cooling.

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u/Sophisticated-Tiger 9h ago

Space is very cold my friend. The reason why things take a while to cool is because "empty" (empty space is not truly empty at all but for our purposes now we can describe it as such) space being a vacuum contains very little to no matter to conduct or convect heat from you. But the temperature of space in general is very cold indeed. Quite close to absolut zero in fact.

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u/JCas127 2h ago

thats what he meant by “cold”.

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u/Sophisticated-Tiger 2h ago

He said,and I quote, "space isn't actually that cold" I'm saying space is indeed cold. What do you mean? .

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u/Amtrox 5h ago

Fossil fuel is not very cheap, since you need a lot of it and have to bring it there.

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u/SuspiciouslySuspect2 5h ago

Who said bringing fossil fuels? I'm talking about the dry ice poles of Mars.

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u/Amtrox 49m ago

Im not that much into climate change on Mars, but why wouldn’t we use the resources available there? I guess they can use some more co2 in the air

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u/SuspiciouslySuspect2 40m ago

Mars atmosphere is mostly CO2. It's why their polar caps are a combination of dry ice (CO2) and water ice, not pure water ice.

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u/Keibun1 8h ago

Outer space can be either hot or cold depending on where you are.

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u/ElijahQuoro 7h ago

Yes. But the temperature of the space vacuum is very low. Technically, considering you are in an insulated space suit, everywhere in the outer space will be very hot.

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u/dern_the_hermit 5h ago

Funny things happen with extreme temperatures and extremely low (ie- vacuum) pressures. You can have gasses and plasmas that are thousands of degrees but they're so thin that it functionally comes out as barely any energy at all.

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u/Urist_Macnme 5h ago edited 3h ago

This is a misconception.

Yes. The vacuum of space is cold, as there is nothing to there to store heat.
Introduce an object though, and it will begin absorbing all of the radiation from the Sun.

One of the biggest engineering concerns for space is heat dissipation.

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u/Dag-nabbitt 3h ago

One of the biggest engineering concerns for space is heat dissipation.

That's true when the electronics are running. Otherwise, even in view of the sun, space structures will get cold. That's why Apollo 13 was at risk of freezing to death.

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u/ElijahQuoro 1h ago

It was an ironic remark about temperature alone not being that important, see parent comment

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u/Hufschmid 6h ago

Same goes for space, yeah it's cold but it's a vacuum so your only option for heat dissipation is radiation which is limited by the surface area of the radiator.

You also get full radiation from the Sun on one side of any spacecraft in our solar system except when it happens to be shielded by a planet or something, so there's a lot of heat to get rid of and you end up needing pretty large radiators.

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u/ElijahQuoro 1h ago

Exactly, it was an irony.

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u/wenoc 6h ago

Not really. Outer space is a vacuum, which happens to be an incredible insulator. You can only radiate heat away and you're constantly in sunlight (depending on where you want to be). It's *much* harder to keep things cool in space.

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u/ElijahQuoro 5h ago

Exactly. I guess the irony of the first sentence doesn't read well.

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u/wenoc 4h ago

Ugh. Sorry.

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u/Vinoto2 3h ago

Something I haven't thought about before, does that mean asteroid mining is super challenging (even once you've got there) because the drill heats up and pretty much never cools down?

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u/ElijahQuoro 1h ago

Oh, that’s a good question. I guess with the high enough temperature gradient part of the heat will transfer to the drilled medium somewhat fast, but only calculation will tell. It doesn’t seem that different from drilling Earth?

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u/JCas127 2h ago

Could they use the thermal mass of the planet? Like the opposite of geothermal

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u/Jyx_The_Berzer_King 2h ago

space may be cold technically, but it's terrible for transferring heat since there's so little to transfer the energy to. same reason double wall thermoses are so good at insulting.

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u/_Aj_ 9h ago

First law of Mars. SI UNITS ONLY

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u/ForensicPathology 7h ago

Why? It's degrees.  There's no need to convert from Celsius to, like, milliCelsius.

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u/purplegrog 4h ago

*laughs in Mars climate orbiter*

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u/Malleus--Maleficarum 9h ago

The problem with vacuum of space and close to vacuum Mars' atmosphere is that they are better at insulating rather than being a heat sink, i.e. to exchange heat you need a medium such as water.

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u/wenoc 6h ago

This is the internet, we use Celsius here.

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u/Iosis 9h ago

You need something to conduct heat away, not just something cold. An extremely thin atmosphere like Mars’s would insulate rather than cool effectively. (Being out in space like a satellite would be even worse: you can’t transfer heat to nothing.)

(Please note this is not a defense of building more data centers on Earth, just one of the many reasons why building them in space would suck, too.)

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u/MercyCriesHavoc 11m ago

Not educated in fluid dynamics, so ELI5. Would a closed system not work for cooling? Like, a set amount of liquid coolant in pipes made from a good conductor that cools as it travels through the pipes, returns to absorb the heat, and is collected as it evaporates to circulate again. I assume it would take many miles of piping, but Mars seems to have plenty of open land for it. That's, of course, dismissing the challenge of getting it there.

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u/CementedRoots 8h ago edited 7h ago

Put a dome around the server racks, fill the dome with a gas medium like nitrogen or whatever is local. When the gas reaches a certain temperature then pump it into the ground until it cools. Once cooled circulate it again. You can add a pool of liquid in the ground too as a exchange medium for a heat sync to the planets crust... Anyone who plays oxygen not included knows this is fine for a few thousand years until the planet overheats lol.

Update... I ran this through my local AI and I was informed Mars's crust is a very poor conductor and you would need approx 2 million square feet (45.9 acres) of thermal heat sync pipes for a small server room. So, it can work for a starter setup ,but not for data centers. Damn mars is a frustrating case.

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u/Flashy_Drummer6664 5h ago

With no place for the heat to escape, even a 1 °k wouldn't be cold enough.

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u/Working_Traffic_6361 12h ago

I'm sure they'd find a way to use human blood

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u/Mediocre_Scott 11h ago

Is that what is happening in the matrix

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u/Cutsdeep- 11h ago

Mediocre_Scott is beginning to believe

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u/Working_Traffic_6361 9h ago

I have been advised by the government overlords to neither confirm or deny your question

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u/Ok-Personality-6630 12h ago

Where do you think the water all went? The datacenters are already there!

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u/Facebook_Algorithm 10h ago

The forecast high on Mars is -12C. The forecast low is -84C.

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u/Questioning-Zyxxel 12h ago

Well, Musk thinks they cool well in a hard vacuum in space.

So they must cool 10x better on Mars. And ping times are also irrelevant after enough drugs...

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u/Arthesia 9h ago

Mars has plenty of water.

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u/EverythingBOffensive 5h ago

build them on the cold side!

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u/Dark_halocraft 4h ago

Doesn't mars have frozen oceans? It'd genuinely be perfect if not for the 20 minute delay in communication

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u/Choyo 3h ago

or something else

Like an atmosphere ... yeah.

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u/Dukkiegamer 26m ago

I thought there wasnt much of it on Mars. Look I dont know enough about this stuff lol. All I know is that humans would get cancer real quick because the atmosphere wouldnt protect our skin enough. Or so Ive been told, not sure if thats true.

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u/Haru1st 11h ago

‘Bit of a latency problem that

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u/Ploddy 11h ago

And the longest lan cable ever

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u/ZombieCommon4030 6h ago

You can make land line calls from the moon we should be good

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u/Radaistarion 9h ago

This bad boi can fit so many data centers :slaps roof of mars:

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u/obalovatyk 11h ago

Everyone gets a data prison.

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u/demonhellcat 10h ago

Don’t forget Dollar Generals

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u/LibrarianRecent6145 12h ago

The latency would still be better than my internet 🥲

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u/SteelHip 11h ago

7 light minutes?

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u/ChmeeWu 8h ago

But only room enough for 1 (ONE) Buy ‘N Large Ultrastore, sadly….

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u/jjmenace 7h ago

Oh, and storage units!

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u/Still-Standin 4h ago

Maybe that’s what made that planet look like it does.

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u/Butthole_seizure 3h ago

Wouldn’t it be a better idea to build data centers on Earth so the machines have better access to power and water and send the humans to Mars to die in experimental slave colonies?

  • Peter Thiel probably

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u/stilljustacatinacage 7h ago

Don't forget the 24 000 square feet of parking, only two spots of which will be occupied at once.

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u/Benschmedium 6h ago

Better there than here