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Can someone with a stronger physics background explain why anyone would think this is a good idea?
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 most large structures, such as ISS, require dedicated cooling radiators that take up a large amount of space.) The launch costs would be still very high, maintenance impractical and the large, large surface area of solar panels and radiators would just be primed for being struck by debris.
What orbital data centres are though, is a good dream to sell, a fine way to dismiss environmental concerns of data centres on the ground - “We’re soon going to start putting them in space, but just for now we have to build them on earth. Please approve our requests.”
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…
If you put them in low earth orbit, now you need complex ground stations and/or phased array antennae to track them and move data. And then your cat image generator is on the other side of the planet every 60 minutes unless you have fancy lasers relaying stuff between satellites.
If you put it into geosynchronous orbit, the transmission is easier but now you've introduced a huge delay in your packets.
And I can't even do the first steps on computing what a typical data center needs in network bandwidth. A few terabits per second? A few petabits? More?
The upside is it avoids the power, cooling, connectivity, location, environmental, staffing and physical security complexities of terrestrial data centers.
The upside is it avoids the power, cooling, connectivity, location, environmental, staffing and physical security complexities of terrestrial data centers.
The upside is it avoids the power, cooling, connectivity, location, environmental, staffing and physical security complexities of terrestrial data centers.
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”
But sometimes problems get solved, undersea cables faced (and still present) a lot of challenges too.
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…
What is the math on data transport? If you put them in low earth orbit, now you need complex ground stations and/or phased array antennae to track them and move data. And then your cat image generator is on the other side of the planet every 60 minutes unless you have fancy lasers relaying stuff between satellites. If you put it into geosynchronous orbit, the transmission is easier but now you've introduced a huge de…
How does that introduce a delay?
The upside is it avoids the power, cooling, connectivity, location, environmental, staffing and physical security complexities of terrestrial data centers.
> power
It still needs power, you’re most likely going to do it with solar if you’re on earth orbit but that isn’t free and you will have periods of no sunlight so a significant amount of batteries will be needed.
> cooling
Cooling off in a vacuum is hard. You’ll need radiators to emit the heat, you’ll need a lot of radiators for data center level heat. This is more mass you need to get into orbit
> location
The location is in space, it’s significantly more expensive to get mass into space than it is to move it someone else on the planet
> environmental
The day to day operations of a space based data center seem like they would be a benefit, but I haven’t seen the math on the environmental cost of the rocket launches vs the lifetime of a terrestrial data center
> staffing
Why would the location in space vs terrestrial change the staffing at all? Any technological change that could/would reduce staffing could be applied to terrestrial data centers as well
> physical security
You’re more secure from people, but now you’ve introduced the physical security risk of space debris where something with the mass of pocket lint could cause serious damage if it impacts your system.
The whole space data center idea is just Musk trying to gin up more demand for his SpaceX IPO with no real benefit behind the idea. He’s been lying like this for years for money like with “Full Self Driving”(lol, don’t take your hands off the wheel because we’ll disengage right before a crash and it’s your problem) or his “robots”(actually remote controlled by humans). I don’t know why anyone listens to him anymore if he doesn’t show up with concrete results first.
It’s like people want to be conned.