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abstract for Server Sky talk by Keith Lofstrom

Server-Sky: Solar powered server and communication arrays in Earth orbit http://www.server-sky.com

The EPA predicts US data center power consumption in 2011 will be 120 billion kilowatt hours, or 3% of total US power consumption, doubling every 5 years thereafter. Our work as programmers and technologists will continue this exponential growth. This will have huge environmental, social, and economic consequences unless we find alternative ways to power the digital economy.

Server sky is a proposal to build large dispersed arrays of 5 gram paper-thin solar-powered computer satellites and launch them into 6400km earth orbit.

A thinsat is a thin sheet of glass covered with thin film solar cells, with embedded processor, memory, and radio chips. Thinsats use light pressure for thrust and electrochromic shutters for steering. Thousands of thinsats position themselves in three dimensional arrays, about 100 meters on a side. An array acts as a large phased array antenna, permitting it to transmit thousands of communication beams simultaneously to ground receivers and other arrays in space.

A thinsat displaces 25 watts of ground-based electrical generation, cooling, and power conversion. A thinsat does not need the racks, cabling, power converters, land, buildings, and other infrastructure needed to build a ground-based server farm. These savings alone may pay for launch.

Thinsat arrays use unlimited space solar power, and operate outside the biosphere. The environmental impact of power generation and heat disposal is tiny. In time, new launch techniques, and solar cells made from lunar rock, can further reduce the environmental and economic costs of manufacturing and launch. However, there are other surprising ecological effects to study!

Earth can return to what it is good at – green and growing things – while space can be filled with gray and computing things.

NOTE: My presentations are animation and graphics heavy, and do not look good with standard slide presentation tools such as OpenOffice.org Impress or Keynote or PooperPoint. So I wrote my own presentation compiler, http://www.server-sky.com/wydiwys, which displays via any web browser with Javascript and Flash. The presentations run about 50 megabytes, or about 1 cent worth of laptop disk space. If this isa problem, I can present with my own machine or off a fat pipe to my high bandwidth server on the net.

NOTE2: This will be an updated version of presentations made to Linuxfest NW, Open Source Bridge, OSCON, Hackers, the Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop, and NASA.

Who is Keith Lofstrom? (http://www.keithl.com/)

Keith is a 59 year old mixed-signal integrated circuit designer in Beaverton, Oregon. He is currently working on Server Sky, data centers in orbit, using large arrays of small, ultrathin satellites to turn space solar power into computing and data communications.

Keith invented the Launch Loop, a space launch system, in 1981. This speculative space launch system can be built with existing technologies and launch thousands of tons into orbit per day at costs below $5/kg.

Keith is active in open source and the Portland Linux Unix Group. Keith's server hosts the dirvish disk-to-disk backup program, based on rsync and written in Perl. Keith has a special interest in low power, high efficiency computing.

Keith has written for Kluwer Press, various IEEE journals, SysAdmin magazine, Liberty magazine, aerospace journals, and Analog .