I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about using satellites for data processing lately. The benefit is better energy generation as I have understood it. But isn’t there a problem in that satelites are bad at expelling excess heat, since they can only do so passively?
No, they are not. Putting a data center in space is a completely ridiculous idea. You can probably build and run hundreds of data centers on earth for the price of one in orbit.
I’d really like to know who put this utter nonsense idea in circulation. Wouldn’t be surprized if it was Elons idea…
Data processing in space can be useful, albeit not in the way that Musk seems to sell it. I spoke with some people from a space startup (edgx) at a jobfair in Belgium half a year ago.
Their thing was that they did some data processing in space to cut down on bandwidth (so this is specifically for applications where satellites are a necessary component). I also remember specifically asking them about cosmic rays and they told me it’s definitely manageable because their computers fly in LEO. (They already have a computer in space)
No <3
heat dissipation on satellites is a cataclysmic showstopper, but even if it was solved, anything on a satellite has to survive launch, is nonrepairable and all of that expensive silicon burns down in a couple of years
“datacenters in space” story is a result of highly advanced reasoning: 1. musk has space launch company 2. musk has ai
companycash furnace 3. musk wants more money and 4. for what i assume are completely rational reasons and not speculation fueled by cultists, ai stocks pumped and only started crashing recentlyand before that, you’re gonna take a real hard look on whether regular ai datacenters on ground are profitable (they’re cash furnaces)
Nah, man. I have an issue with your wording. You have not been “hearing a lot of talk”. You are quoting one specific lie of a prolific grifter.
Nobody in their right mind agrees with this. If you had put your question as “Elon Musk, owner of a satellite launching company, as well as several money burning pits, wants others to pay him to put some of those money burners into orbit. Is there any sense to this?”, the answer would be trivial.
It has come up in talks with a friend of mine, I have read an independent article on it and I have also read Musk wants to do it. That is my experience with the topic. I think it’s patronizing that you tell me how I should phrase my question.
Of course you would. But I also don’t quite believe you. Everybody lies on the internet, and when I see corporate PR being regurgitated by someone pretending to be “just one of us”, indignant when confronted, expecting the benefit of the doubt, I call it out.
Well just the other day I was doing my regular human activities with my biological friend Frobert, and just between consuming two Earth crustaceans, we came to talk about the benefits of alchemy to transmute people into gold. We’ve got the idea from Grok.
It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re an actual shill or someone genuinely uninformed whose talking points reflect whatever a shill would say. If you give me the Musk fan impression, I’m gonna give you the Musk fan treatment. Call me patronising if you want 🤷.
Yeah, you’re being an ass.
I found several companies planning on launching data centers into orbit.
Blue Origin, Orbital, Aetherflux, and Starcloud.
only one of those even has a launch platform
And that matters … how?
Because “planning to” in this case is practically code for “grifting their investors with fairytales”, especially with these people. The self-driving car, the underground tunnel that would replace motorways, the chatbot that would replace people, the Mars colony, these are all lies no matter if it’s Musk saying them or anyone else trying to get some of the same easy money.
Woosh
That’s not the point. I agree space data centers are dumb. The point is it’s not as impossible sounding to many people as you make it out to be.
No, it’s a stupid idea through and through.
Absolutely. Data centers on earth are subject to the laws of physics. Data centers in space, per SpaceX’s white paper on the subject, operate beyond paltry thermodynamics, material sciences, and several other fields of science. When you’re that much of an IPO boosting gigachadalphabro it’s all profit.
Everyone knows physics doesn’t exist in outer space. If it did, there would be gravity.
Nobody can hear you lying in space.
- heat (dissipation)
- power
- network bandwidth
- cosmic rays (shielding)
- part failures (with so many parts, there’s always something broken
- eol parts (lifecycling in 3-5 yrs avg)
They are all challenges that can be overcome. But at what cost. Consensus is that economically it seems hilariously unviable. Datacenters tend to have to make their money back within about 3 years. The 3 year make money back issue is also why I believe the AI DC buildout is such a high risk gamble/bubble. In a year or two, all that hardware they made a year ago will need to be replaced. You just redo the whole investment again…
Yep. Data center in space is about as dumb as an underwater bakery.
That actually isn’t a bad analogy
You’ve been hearing the marketing hype of a Nazi space company CEO trying to prop up his company’s stock price so he can unload his rotten shares.
They’re good for people selling rocket launches.
Fuck no. They’re a stupid, terrible idea peddled by psychotic grifters.
Even the “energy generation benefit” is dubious. The solar panels in space might be more efficient, but if you consider the cost of transportation, installation and maintenance… It won’t add up. You could just build more panels on earth and get similar results (still much cheaper). It’s not like we are running low on space on earth.
Yes because it’s a bubble, none of them make real money so it’s a waste to actually build them, but you have to fake it to scam investors. On earth the investors will look at land purchases and permits and power contracts and construction, so you have to spend millions of dollars to fake it. You can trade stock back and forth with Nvidia and “order” infinite chips that will never exist but you can’t do that for electricians.
In space you just have to already own a vanity project rocket company. You fill out a form with the FCC and get a theoretical permit to launch “up to” 100 quadrillion datacenters into space, and then just point to a windowless factory that might theoretically have the capacity to make datacenter satellites but you can’t let them see inside because you have classified defense contracts. Who knows might be a trillion dollars in shareholder value in there, you can’t prove there isn’t.
Can any kind strangers here share some reads (or anything) on heat dissipation in space? My understanding is that there is virtually no medium to carry away all that energy, but I remember reading something about satellite and space stations actually cool off and there being some sort of a solution to heat. I just wanna learn more.
ELI5 version: You know how things glow red when heated up? That takes energy, or, more precisely, that converts heat energy to light. And you know how the color changes the hotter it is? Even before its starts to glow red it actually still glows, pretty much everything does, we just dont see it because it falls outside of visible spectrum, but thermal cameras can and that’s how they work. So, for space question, just take a big plate, and unlike solar panels, point it perpendicular to the sunlight. Run some coolant through it and you’ve got a space chiller. If you look at i.e. ISS photos you’ll see big solar arays at the sides and smaller jagged square panels protruding off the middle and some off the sides, those are exactly it, the so-called “heat rejection units”. Actually while double checking myself I was surprised to learn that they do not run a thermal pump between radiators and everything else, I always thought they did as hotter objects dissipate more energy, but apparently shipping more radiators to orbit was a better tradeoff than constantly wasting energy pumping the heat away.
Thanks!
this website covers heat and cold pretty well in my opinion: https://www.jameswebbdiscovery.com/satellite-technology/heat-management-in-satellites-techniques-for-dissipating-heat-in-space
since radiating heat is the only real way of getting rid of heat, the main solutions are limited size and power combined with insulation. quite opposite to what datacenters do.
Nice article, thanks!
The amount of energy required to send a human up there for maintenance is, literally, astronomical. Can a datacenter run at a profit with zero humans and up in space? Your guess is as good as mind.
It would be astronomically expensive, wasteful, and expensive (yes twice).
Got a server rack damaged? Are the IT going up to fix it or astronauts? What kind of training would there need to be? What about upgrades? What about waste or recycling of old equipment? Do you just eject out into space wasting all the precious resources??
It’s a completely stupid thought that they hoped sounded cool, but it’s not really beneficial in any way
