The advantage is solar power in space. They will never stop getting sunlight.
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Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality
11–20 of 67 posts
Re: Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality
#12Data Centers in Space are a practical engineering impossibility, as well as making no economic sense. Engineering and the laws of physics get on the way. Just because Scott Manley refuses to call that out, so he can do another eight videos about it, don´t stop listening to somebody with the feet on the ground: "Orbital Data Centers: Spacecraft Constraints and Economic Viability" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27197 "Ho…
>Data Centers in Space are a practical engineering impossibility,
Not really, thermal radiators are well understood and the size needed aren't really that unreasonable. Radiation hardening the GPUs is probably the single hardest problem along with actual launch costs.
>making no economic sense
Yes this is the real issue, Spacex would need to reduce the cost of launches by ~10x with Starship for it to ever be viable.
Re: Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good thing Elon's companies have a history of moving engineering impossibilities from impossible to slightly late. Remember when globally competitive electric cars, re-usable boosters, catching a rocket with chopsticks, playing a fps game via a brain implant, and maintaining a satellite constellation at 480km LEO were also impossible?
Almost no one said those were impossible, just hard. This is completely different. Rather like... a train in a vacuum tube hard. Definitely harder than making a subway with autonomous trains under a modern city. And much harder than being a third rate AI lab, though Elon did hit that target perfectly.
Train-in-a-vacuum-tube isn't even restricted by the laws of physics, and it doesn't have to be a perfect vacuum anyway, just low pressure. Data Centers IN SPAAAAAACE have the teensy little problem of cooling that you can't just brute-force a solution to. Those giant things dangling off the ISS that make up most of its footprint aren't solar panels, they're heatsinks, and they still have issues managing heat.
Re: Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality
#14Data Centers in Space are a practical engineering impossibility, as well as making no economic sense. Engineering and the laws of physics get on the way. Just because Scott Manley refuses to call that out, so he can do another eight videos about it, don´t stop listening to somebody with the feet on the ground: "Orbital Data Centers: Spacecraft Constraints and Economic Viability" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27197 "Ho…
Good thing Elon's companies have a history of moving engineering impossibilities from impossible to slightly late. Remember when globally competitive electric cars, re-usable boosters, catching a rocket with chopsticks, playing a fps game via a brain implant, and maintaining a satellite constellation at 480km LEO were also impossible?
This is not about something being impossible, but something that solves no problem except keeping launchers busy.
The only reason I can imagine for space-based data storage is being out of reach of most police investigators. Recently, a very corrupt banker in Brazil was arrested and his phones were confiscated and, up to now, two have been cracked, with a big effect on the approaching election. If the thing is in orbit, it's a lot harder to confiscate it.
Re: Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality
#15have you ever seen a detailed photo of the ISS?
* https://images2.imgbox.com/64/4b/GhtUtq1m_o.jpg
look at how massive the solar panels and more importantly the thermal radiators are outside
compare to the size of the human habitat tubes
"AI" in space would demand as much if not even more for each node
Re: Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality
#16Data Centers in Space are a practical engineering impossibility, as well as making no economic sense. Engineering and the laws of physics get on the way. Just because Scott Manley refuses to call that out, so he can do another eight videos about it, don´t stop listening to somebody with the feet on the ground: "Orbital Data Centers: Spacecraft Constraints and Economic Viability" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27197 "Ho…
Good thing Elon's companies have a history of moving engineering impossibilities from impossible to slightly late. Remember when globally competitive electric cars, re-usable boosters, catching a rocket with chopsticks, playing a fps game via a brain implant, and maintaining a satellite constellation at 480km LEO were also impossible?
Is the starlink constellation profitable on its on without any cross subsidization from any other Musk endeavor?
From the SpaceX S-1: "For launches of our Starlink satellites, the Company does not recognize any inter-segment revenue, rather those launch costs are capitalized in satellites in Property, plant, and equipment, net." In plain terms: SpaceX's rocket division charges outside customers roughly $102 million per Falcon 9 launch — but it charges Starlink $0.
SpaceX appears to be heavily subsidizing Starlink in the launch cost sense.
There is a mix of clever and sketchy accounting going on in Muskworld making it hard to see which elements profitable/sustainable and what isn't.
Re: Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost no one said those were impossible, just hard. This is completely different. Rather like... a train in a vacuum tube hard. Definitely harder than making a subway with autonomous trains under a modern city. And much harder than being a third rate AI lab, though Elon did hit that target perfectly.
Train-in-a-vacuum-tube isn't even restricted by the laws of physics, and it doesn't have to be a perfect vacuum anyway, just low pressure. Data Centers IN SPAAAAAACE have the teensy little problem of cooling that you can't just brute-force a solution to. Those giant things dangling off the ISS that make up most of its footprint aren't solar panels, they're heatsinks, and they still have issues managing heat.
Well... If the launch cost is low enough you can just pack a radiator large enough. Good thing this might drive the development of a wider Starship and Ultraheavy booster (or a Superheavy-Heavy where three Superheavy rockets boost a bigger, heavier Starship). Eventually we can get to the Comicallyheavy booster.
Re: Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality
#18The advantage is solar power in space. They will never stop getting sunlight.
In LEO you are about 50% of the time in the shadow of the Earth. Higher orbits or solar orbit (where you can get uninterrupted sunlight) require a lot more fuel and the further out the data center is, the higher the latency.
Re: Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good thing Elon's companies have a history of moving engineering impossibilities from impossible to slightly late. Remember when globally competitive electric cars, re-usable boosters, catching a rocket with chopsticks, playing a fps game via a brain implant, and maintaining a satellite constellation at 480km LEO were also impossible?
There's a difference between "infeasible given materials and manufacturing capabilities of the time" and "infeasible as a scalable solution due to the laws of physics"
There is also the very practical question of "what problem is this trying to solve?"
Re: Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good thing Elon's companies have a history of moving engineering impossibilities from impossible to slightly late. Remember when globally competitive electric cars, re-usable boosters, catching a rocket with chopsticks, playing a fps game via a brain implant, and maintaining a satellite constellation at 480km LEO were also impossible?
Is the starlink constellation profitable on its on without any cross subsidization from any other Musk endeavor? From the SpaceX S-1: "For launches of our Starlink satellites, the Company does not recognize any inter-segment revenue, rather those launch costs are capitalized in satellites in Property, plant, and equipment, net." In plain terms: SpaceX's rocket division charges outside customers roughly $102 million p…
> Is the starlink constellation profitable on its on without any cross subsidization from any other Musk endeavor?
This is always a funny "gotcha" people bring up. Except the gotcha is always different somehow. Sometimes it's "the US subsidizes it" because NASA gets amazing deals on launches it would otherwise pay 10x or more for. Sometimes it's Starlink that subsidizes the launches. Sometimes it's the launches that subsidizes Starlink.
Maybe the answer is just what is obvious: vertical integration and economies of scale makes starlink/falcon 9 profitable. The combination is the thing.