this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
405 points (93.9% liked)
Technology
80478 readers
5312 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is a tiny amount of power. My house alone has over 3x that (I have 48 kW of electric service). Feeding my house with 48 kW and dissipating the heat is MUCH MUCH MUCH cheaper than doing this on the ISS not once, not twice, but thrice on this ISS....just to achieve what my home achieves right now. And don't think this is some odd amount for a home, this is a basic 200A home service line.
Space datacenters are a meme.
You don't use 48 kW you have 48kW capacity, that'd be 33 (1500W) electric space heaters running nonstop 24/7. I have electric heat, electric oven/range, and an electric car and I averaged 3 kW across the last week. (406 kWh between the 26th and 1st)
A comparison that is reasonable is an h100 rack cluster like this which uses about 60 kW per rack. For input power, the newer iROSA solar panels generate about 20 kW at a size of 20ft x 60ft each. Throw in 4 of those radiators, and you have something that is feasible to throw into space. Again, I can't judge the economics of launching and running a space based datacenter business, but you could absolutely launch and operate a space rack with current tech.
The ISS is one of the most expensive pieces of infrastructure humanity has built, it costs something on the order of $150B. My home I personally paid for, out of my own pocket, and it has 3x the power power supply of the ISS.
How about this. You give me 10% of the cost of the ISS and that datacenter rack, and I'll use the $15,000,000,000 to buy a big AC system to cool the rack. We both make out. You paid 10x less and got 3x as much power capacity, and I got FIFTEEN BILLION DOLLARS to service and maintain a residential sized power line.
If you aren't getting what I'm laying down. The issue isn't the technology, the issue is the many orders of magnitude of extra cost.