They're Made Out of Compute

After Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat," and Max Leiter's "They're Made Out of Weights."

"They want to put it in space."

"In space? Put what in space?"

"The computers. The ones they're spending all that money on. They filed for up to a million."

"A million what?"

"Satellites. Each one a data center. They want to run the thinking machines in orbit because the ground ran out of power."

"That's ridiculous. You're telling me they want to take the most valuable thing they own and throw it off the planet?"

"Off the planet. On purpose. The sun barely sets up there, so the panels barely stop. The spreadsheet said it was cheaper."

"Well. At least it's far. Deep, hard to reach. That's the smart part."

"That's the thing. It isn't far. Five hundred kilometers. Six hundred. Low orbit. You can watch one go over from a lawn chair."

"Fine, but space is big. Insanely big. They'll scatter a million boxes across the void and you'll never find them all."

"Some designs need them close together so they can exchange data quickly. One public design packs eighty-one into a cluster a kilometer in radius. Some of them only a hundred or two hundred meters apart."

"A hundred meters."

"Closer than the houses on my street."

"Okay. But they can protect the equipment."

"One design unfolds a solar wing wider than a jumbo jet. How would they replace a failed unit once it's in orbit?"

"They must have thought about repairs."

"I assume they have. I still want to know what happens when something fails."

"And if they can't repair it?"

"Then they'd better have planned for losing it."

"At least it can work on its own."

"The satellites talk to one another with lasers. They still need a working connection to ground stations. Someone has to send instructions and receive the results."

"So being up there doesn't make it independent."

"No. That connection still has to work."

"And it's guarded. Obviously. From up there. Something watching its back."

"They can detect threats from orbit. The interceptor program is aiming for a demonstration by 2028. That still leaves the question of how these satellites would be protected."

"Surely no one would dare. It would take a..."

"It would take one. In 1962 they set off a bomb four hundred kilometers up, over the ocean, for science. A megaton and change. Streetlights failed in Hawaii, fourteen hundred kilometers away. It killed satellites that weren't even built to be targets. They did that by accident, sixty years ago, when the sky was nearly empty."

"So one detonation..."

"Could damage satellites well beyond the immediate blast. The radiation can remain for years."

"Would they delay the launch until the protection was ready?"

"I'd like to hear someone ask that."

"So what do we do about it?"

"Officially? We express grave concern. We co-sponsor a resolution. We call for norms."

"And unofficially?"

"Unofficially? We watch. I don't think we'll be the only ones."

"Cruel."

"We didn't put it there."

the end

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Notes behind the story

I wrote about filming interceptors near home in the data-center piece. It is part of why these proposals worry me.

The dialogue draws on several public proposals, including tightly grouped satellites and large solar arrays. The sources below also cover the 1962 test and the planned interceptor demonstration. I want to understand how operators would handle failures and protect the equipment from the first launch.

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