Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Are orbital data centers possible / a good idea?

news.ycombinator.com

41–46 of 46 posts

Re: Ask HN: Are orbital data centers possible / a good idea?

#41
Orbital data centers aren't really a question of physics, but a question about economics.

To answer the physics/engineering question - no, there's nothing really "stopping" us from launching orbital data centers. You'll note that most responses so far focus on the economics, and not the question of whether or not it's possible to do in the first place.

So, there's only one question that matters - is launching and operating orbital data centers cheaper than building and running a terrestrial data center?

There are three financial aspects of "building" a data center- the initial capital expenditure, the recurring operational expenditure, and the revenue it generates. The asset comparison is between launch cost + computers + satellite vs. building + computers.

Our first comparison is the cost of a rocket launch vs building a building. Here, the big technology enabler is SpaceX. SpaceX has been driving down launch costs for years, and Starlink is proof that significant reduction of launch costs can create new markets with fairly respectable profit margins. If this trend continues, then the capex math of launch vs build will continue to shift in favor of orbital data centers.

The second comparison is between building and operating satellites compared to outfitting and operating data centers. Here, it's a lot less concrete. Orbital and terrestrial data centers each have their pros and cons. For satellites, you have better solar panel efficiency, manufacturing economies of scale, but radiation-only cooling, space-to-Earth data transfer, and no maintenance access, requiring higher redundancy, rad hardening, and the like. On the ground, we have, well, many more options.

But it's not immediately obvious which of the two is better when it comes to capex and opex combined. It's clear which is harder to do, but it's not clear which is cheaper to do.

All of this pales in comparison to revenue. Because everyone is so insanely AI-crazy right now and starving for more compute, the potential revenue can justify a relatively high cost (and high risk) business. Like someone else mentioned, orbital data centers don't really make sense if you're launching an ordinary data center with ordinary revenue numbers.

There's a fourth dimension here, which is time to scale. Regulations, permits, and all the other challenges of construction can slow down your deployment significantly. None of that is required in space. How significant this is, you'd have to ask someone who understands construction better than I, but I suspect this could be a significant reason for the attraction to orbital data centers.

---

Nuances involving orbits, rocket payload capability and availability, and more have been omitted for simplicity. I don't have the numbers - the above is just to highlight the relevant principles.

Re: Ask HN: Are orbital data centers possible / a good idea?

#42
orbital data centers are inevitable for certain military and business interests as they will provide access in geographic locations that are now unserviced, and under conditiins where cables are cut or other data centers are lost on the ground. though the ability to maximise any tactical advantage will be dependent on the skills and strengths of teams and indivuals on the ground. it is quite clear from the design of the starlink satelites bieng developed, that they are designed to maximise surface area in order to radiate heat, for which they have MUCH better data than anyone else, and can obviously repuropse existing hardware for multiple missions now.

Re: Ask HN: Are orbital data centers possible / a good idea?

#43

As someone working in aerospace, orbital data centres are almost certainly impossible or very impractical, at least at the scale being sold by the AI salesmen. What would they be cheaper on? Solar panels are a little bit more effective and they will have a 24/7 coverage if placed in the correct orbit. However, they would be much harder to cool (space is cold, yes, but heat transfer in vacuum does not work easily and…

Wouldn't space data centers be a magnitudes larger environmental issue when they eventually come back to earth and turn into GPU dust in the atmosphere?

A small Starlink satellite burning up once in a while won't destroy the environment, but a multi-gigawatt space datacenter vaporizing in the atmosphere is probably a very bad idea.

Re: Ask HN: Are orbital data centers possible / a good idea?

#44
post #22

What problem is solved by putting a data center in orbit? You can solve all of them far cheaper and easier on land.

Energy cost can be theoretically lower than on earth IF launch costs and additional hardware costs are low enough. Because solar is about 5x better on space than on earth. That's basically it.

For fun, I ran some numbers here.

If we wanted to launch the Stratos Hyperscale AI Data Center, which will take 40,000 acres of land, to space, we're looking at roughly 3 million tons of equipment, or 3 billion kilograms. SpaceX charges $1520 per kilogram, so it would be about $4.5T to launch all of that into orbit. We'll just assume the space station already exists and labor is free to hook it up, given that we've already hit the annual budget for the US federal government in launch fees. And it'll take about 47,000 launches to get the equipment there, or roughly 300 years.

Re: Ask HN: Are orbital data centers possible / a good idea?

#45
delusional people. like what's the problem to solve? if mil sat's need gpu's ok... but that's a custom job / niche market.

for wholesale cloud computing you're just making the execution of deploying compute 100000000000x harder putting a spaceship, motors, solar cells, building sized radiators up into a space ... then you get a loose screw and you need to send up... an astronaut?

bonkers, these people are seeing stars... but in the cartoon sense when you hit your head.

Re: Ask HN: Are orbital data centers possible / a good idea?

#46
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just adds a bunch of new problems. ”We need a replacement cable. Guess we have to send a rocket and it’s gonna take a few months to plan”

Sure, it's got a loooooot of complexities that undermine those upsides. But sometimes problems get solved, undersea cables faced (and still present) a lot of challenges too.

But this is the harder choice. It’s like saying ”look undersea cables have problems so instead of putting them under the sea, why don’t we put cables above the sea instead and have helium balloons holding up the cable from Europe to North America. We solve the underwater problems…
Post reply on HN