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Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

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Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#31

Post by NitpickLawyer »

DauntingPear7 wrote: post #25
ai-x wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How do the laws of physics allow it? How do you disperse the heat? How do you protect your compute from cosmic rays? How do you get enough solar up there without catastrophic damage from micrometeorites?

I think the company that has managed to launch and currently operates ~10k satellites can figure those out. Still remains to be seen if the economics make sense, but with increased "anti" stuff happening all around (some of which surely is manufactured) who knows? 5 - 10 years from now things might change.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#32

Post by Grombobulous »

superkuh wrote: post #9

Why submit links to pages that have absolutely no information on them? ft.com is useless and does not display articles. It should probably be on a banlist for HN.

There’s an archive link in the comments, so it’s readable.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#33

Post by ww520 »

skywhopper wrote: post #11
chasd00 wrote: post #5

From what I can tell, the DC buildout isn't going that well. I've been wondering about the current status of the projects because there hasn't been much in the news or here about new DC's coming online. This report summary makes the point that getting power to the datacenters with onsite generation is running into roadblocks from permitting to even finding turbines to buy. He who shouldn't be named (here) made the sa…

The idea that we can’t get enough electrical power on earth because of supply constraints, but that we can solve that by launching the datacenters and their entire support infrastructure into space makes no sense unless you’re a huckster trying to pump up your space launch business ahead of an IPO. There’s no way we are more constrained on land-based solar+battery equipment than we would be on space-worthy solar+batt…

Space DC make sense when local governments and communities don't want DC built on Earth. Space DC is an engineering and finance problem, not a problem in legal/permission, real estate, power generation, grid delivery, environmental, etc.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#34

Post by fidotron »

roryirvine wrote: post #28
throwaway26721 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because that's exactly what his job was for the previous 5 years... Or possibly senior leadership isn’t happy with the pace of DC buildout over the last 5-years.

Very unlikely to be the technical build team at fault for that. Real estate, legal, permitting, utility connections, construction, plant fit out, testing and certification, security, customs and immigration, and shipping all need to happen first - and every one of those has room for huge amounts of uncertainty and delay, more so if you're doing it internationally. There aren't many shortcuts that you can take when yo…

Technical staff are easiest to pin the blame on in any given situation. All those other fields require enormously more people skills and political inclination.

If you are in an org like that and there is an effort to pin something on technical people inappropriately the reaction when there's solid push back approaches total hysterical breakdown since it's so unexpected. Even if the tech staff "win" they'll be marked for the rest of their time there.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#35

Post by smallerize »

DauntingPear7 wrote: post #25
ai-x wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How do the laws of physics allow it? How do you disperse the heat? How do you protect your compute from cosmic rays? How do you get enough solar up there without catastrophic damage from micrometeorites?

Ars Technica is doing a series on this. They have published 2/3 parts so far. https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/how-hard-is-it-to-buil...

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#36

Post by mike_hearn »

skywhopper wrote: post #11
chasd00 wrote: post #5

From what I can tell, the DC buildout isn't going that well. I've been wondering about the current status of the projects because there hasn't been much in the news or here about new DC's coming online. This report summary makes the point that getting power to the datacenters with onsite generation is running into roadblocks from permitting to even finding turbines to buy. He who shouldn't be named (here) made the sa…

The idea that we can’t get enough electrical power on earth because of supply constraints, but that we can solve that by launching the datacenters and their entire support infrastructure into space makes no sense unless you’re a huckster trying to pump up your space launch business ahead of an IPO. There’s no way we are more constrained on land-based solar+battery equipment than we would be on space-worthy solar+batt…

On Earth it has to be fossil fuels. With solar you can't do it. I haven't done the calculations myself so, full disclosure, AI work ahead. But I asked GPT 5.6 how big a solar and battery farm would have to be to power a one gigawatt datacenter such that it could ride out a few cloudy days in a row (this is far below the reliability bar).

Its answer is you'd need an "absurdly large battery" and a solar farm of over 100 square kilometers, quite possibly up to over 200 square kilometers. And it would need to be built in the desert.

Also, normal utility scale LiON battery sites are only meant to provide stabilization services for hours, not days.

The problem is you have to overspec the solar farm quite a lot because it must not only be able to power a one gigawatt facility, but also generate more than that so it can recharge the battery packs during the day too.

So this just doesn't work. You think datacenter permitting is bad when it only requires some on-site gas turbines? Imagine the difficulty of getting a 200 square kilometer solar farm over the finishing line.

No, it's quite possible Elon is going to win this one. Regulation is expensive! He can just fire a constant stream of satellites into space. The constellation needed to provide a gigawatt of inferencing would be about the same size as today's Starlink system, well within the bounds of what he's proven can be done.

The threat to space based datacenters isn't really the physics of it. It's the risk of a bubble pop that temporarily craters demand and/or an overbuild of terrestrial capacity. Outside of the software industry we don't see huge new blocks of inferencing demand, and OpenAI at least doesn't seem capacity constrained at all right now.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#37

Post by idontwantthis »

henry2023 wrote: post #29
ai-x wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Sending to LEO costs around $2,700 usd and 9kWh of fuel per kilogram. If you manage to send a data center with high end processing units, large array of solar panels, even larger liquid cooling and tick shielding against solar rays you’d have spent probably 100x to 1000x the cost of an equivalent earth data center even without considering hardware deprecation. You’re better off sinking your data center deep in the se…

I tried to find what the worst option is other than putting them in space and you can do a lot! Trucking diesel to the middle of the Sahara is a decent option in comparison to space.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#38

Post by quickthrowman »

wmf wrote: post #27
skywhopper wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that we can’t get enough electrical power on earth because of supply constraints, but that we can solve that by launching the datacenters and their entire support infrastructure into space makes no sense unless you’re a huckster trying to pump up your space launch business ahead of an IPO. There’s no way we are more constrained on land-based solar+battery equipment than we would be on space-worthy solar+batt…

For whatever reason, nobody is trying to build solar-powered AI datacenters. Maybe they can't find enough land.

It takes 2.5 million solar panels to generate 1GW of electricity assuming 400W per panel and direct sunlight. 2.5M times 18 sq ft per panel is about 1000 acres or ~1.55 sq mi.

That would work for a 1 GW data center, during the day, without clouds, during the summer.

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#39

Post by sudonem »

cmiles8 wrote: post #21

Oracle is increasingly looking like the Lehman Brothers of the AI boom. One day it will all go pop and the cards will start crumbling elsewhere in the industry.

Except for the part where Oracle is so deeply embedded into the US government, and Larry Ellison is connected enough that they will be granted any and all bailouts necessary to prevent this (while everyone pretends not to notice that such bailouts are socialism)

Re: Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

#40

Post by abirch »

mike_hearn wrote: post #36
skywhopper wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that we can’t get enough electrical power on earth because of supply constraints, but that we can solve that by launching the datacenters and their entire support infrastructure into space makes no sense unless you’re a huckster trying to pump up your space launch business ahead of an IPO. There’s no way we are more constrained on land-based solar+battery equipment than we would be on space-worthy solar+batt…

On Earth it has to be fossil fuels. With solar you can't do it. I haven't done the calculations myself so, full disclosure, AI work ahead. But I asked GPT 5.6 how big a solar and battery farm would have to be to power a one gigawatt datacenter such that it could ride out a few cloudy days in a row (this is far below the reliability bar). Its answer is you'd need an "absurdly large battery" and a solar farm of over 10…

How do you cool the data center in space cost effectively? Unfortunately in space there isn't a lot of material (air) to transfer the heat.
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