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Data centers in space makes no sense

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Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#541

Post by bildung »

trhway wrote: post #338
space_fountain wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like this. Everything about operating a datacenter in space is more difficult than it is to operate one on earth. 1. The capital costs are higher, you have to expend tons of energy to put it into orbit 2. The maintenance costs are higher because the lifetime of satellites is pretty low 3. Refurbishment is next to impossible 4. Networking is harder, either you are ok with a relatively small datacenter or you have…

>1. The capital costs are higher, you have to expend tons of energy to put it into orbit putting 1KW of solar on land - $2K, putting it into orbit on Starship (current ground-based heavy solar panels, 40kg for 4m2 of 1KW in space) - anywhere between $400 and $4K. Add to that that the costs on Earth will only be growing, while costs in space will be falling. Ultimately Starship's costs will come down to the bare cost…

1 KW of solar panels is 150€ retail right now. You are probably at 80€ or less if you buy a few MW.

(I'm ignoring installation costs etc. because actually creating the satellites is ignored here, too)

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#543

Post by bendews »

spoaceman7777 wrote: post #539
beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

He goes on about putting a mass driver on the moon for ultra-low-cost space launches. His plan here clearly hinges around using robots to create a fully-automated GPU manufacturing and launch facility on the moon. Not launching any meaningful number from earth. Raises some big questions about whether there are actually sufficient materials for GPU manufacture on the moon... But, whatever the case, the current pitch o…

If any single country tried to create a whole production chain to single-handedly manufacture modern computer equipment it would be on the order of decades to see any result. Doing it on the moon is just not realistic this century, maybe the next one. Although i don't think the economics would ever work out.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#544

Post by padjo »

gpt5 wrote: post #235
lancewiggs wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exiting the 5th best social network and the 10th (or worse) best AI company and selling them to a decent company. It probably increases Elon's share of the combined entity. It delivers on a promise to investors that he will make money for them, even as the underlying businesses are lousy.

I'm confused about the level of conversation here. Can we actually run the math on heat dissipation and feasibility? A Starlink satellite uses about 5K Watts of solar power. It needs to dissipate around that amount (+ the sun power on it) just to operate. There are around 10K starlink satellites already in orbit, which means that the Starlink constellation is already effectively equivalent to a 50 Mega-watt (in a rou…

Are starlink satellites in sun synchronous orbits? Doesn't constant solar heating change the energy balance quite a bit?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#545

Post by ExoticPearTree »

beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

> It makes far more sense to build data centers in the arctic.

Unfortunately no. The arctic region is too cold and humid. You need way more energy to manage the cooling of a datacenter there than somewhere hotter.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#546

Post by jraby3 »

benl wrote: post #379

Data centers in space may or may not make sense (personally I'm quite skeptical) but the objections in the article certainly don't make sense. 1. The only reason there are 15,000 satellites in space is because SpaceX launched about 9,500 of them (Starlink is 65% of all satellites) on their semi-reusable Falcon 9. If fully-reusable Starship pans out, they will be launching satellites at 10x the rate of Falcon 9 at the…

A few additional items to rebut the lack of info in this Article:

- SpaceX just requested a license to launch up to a million satellites.

- the satellites already have some incredible anti collision software, which I believe Elon has now open sourced.

- the cost to launch 1 kg to space has dropped by a factor of 10 in the past few years and is currently less than $1000. It's perfectly reasonable to estimate that over the next 10 years the cost could drop by another factor of 10, if not more, particularly if the heavy rockets are reusable.

1. https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/31/spacex-seeks-federal-appro...

2. https://starlink.com/updates/stargaze

3. https://www.netizen.page/2025/05/cost-per-kilogram-to-low-ea...

Edit: added item 3

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#547

Post by ospray »

beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

The only way I see this actually working given the resource requirement is delta-v style with in orbit resource extraction using robots. By transferring heat to asteroids in the shade of the solar panels at L1 or something.

https://share.google/uXWQyAp7a8nE03qoi

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#548

Post by rsynnott »

m463 wrote: post #456
beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

I used to really enjoy musk's talks when he was spooling up tesla. He was an engineer and obviously the world is missing what engineers see clearly. But now looking back and accounting for the claims he made there's a pattern. I saw this article: https://www.wired.com/story/theres-a-very-simple-pattern-to-... that said... he did jumpstart the EV industry. He has put up satellites every week for years. He is still a n…

> he did jumpstart the EV industry.

This is widely believed (especially in the US, where, other than the Leaf, most early electric cars never launched), but honestly pretty dubious. The first real electric cars, with significant production:

2010 - Mitsubishi i-MiEV, Nissan Leaf

2011 - Smart electric, Volvo C30 electric, Ford Focus electric, BYD e6.

2012 - Renault Zoe (Renault launched a couple of other vehicles on the same platform ~2010, but they never saw significant production), Tesla Model S (Tesla had a prior car, the Roadster, but it never saw significant production).

2013 - VW eUP, eGolf (VW occasionally put out an electric Golf historically, going back to 1992, but again those were never produced in large quantities).

The big change ~2010 was around the economics of lithium ion batteries; they finally got cheap enough that everyone started pulling their concept designs and small-scale demonstration models into full production.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#549

Post by kuschku »

mlindner wrote: post #281
beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

I want to nitpick you here but a thermos is specifically good at insulating because not only does it have a vacuum gap, it's also got two layers of metal (inner and outer) to absorb and reflect thermal radiation. That specific aspect is NOT true in space because there's nothing stopping thermal radiation. Now you're correct that you can't remove heat by conduction or convection in space, but it's not that hard to rad…

> a thermos is specifically good at insulating because not only does it have a vacuum gap, it's also got two layers of metal (inner and outer) to absorb and reflect thermal radiation.

Not necessarily. There are many modern thermos "cups" that are just a regular cup, except with two layers of glass and a vacuum. Even the top is open all the time. (e.g. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/passerad-double-wall-glass-8054... )

It's still good enough to keep your coffee hot for an entire day.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#550

Post by jraby3 »

adastra22 wrote: post #516
rockemsockem wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kessler syndrome is only a problem if the satellites are in LEO. They don't have to be.

They do have to be if they want to be approved by the FCC. And btw Kessler syndrome applies to any orbital band. You've got the logic backwards. Kessler syndrome is usually only considered a threat for LEO because that's where most of the satellites are. But if you're throwing million(s) of satellites into orbit, it becomes an issue at whatever orbital height you pick.

https://starlink.com/updates/stargaze
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