Technology

I don't think the point is to really build datacenters in space. The point is to convince investors that it can be done in a profitable manner so some people can create a fake businesses out of it and siphon money off the system. Much like the same as trying to convince investors that LLM + more money = AGI

Mr Musk has to justify that 1.75t valuation somehow

Don’t data-centers require massive cooling?

Naive question, but would bit-flip also be a problem without the atmosphere to shield (some) radiation?

There's another problem that nobody mentions. Putting thousands of additional satellites into space would seriously increase the risk of Kessler Syndrome occurring.

Maybe for a space based population a data center in space would work. This is just taking off site hosting too far.

The idea of putting data centers in low Earth orbit sounds cool at first. It feels futuristic. It feels like something that should be efficient. It is not.

Yes, space is cold. Yes, you get a lot of solar power. Those are the two points everyone repeats. What they leave out is basic physics and cost.

Cooling in space is not free. There is no convection. Heat only leaves through radiation. That means giant radiator panels. AI racks throw off massive heat loads. The more compute you add, the more radiator surface area you need. That adds mass. Mass costs money to launch.

Even with companies like SpaceX driving launch prices down, it is still extremely expensive per kilogram. And servers are not permanent infrastructure. They get replaced every three to five years. You cannot economically upgrade racks in orbit the way you do in a building on Earth.

Then you have radiation. Either you harden the electronics, which makes them slower and more expensive, or you accept higher failure rates and build in heavy redundancy. Maintenance becomes a logistical nightmare. A failed power supply on Earth is a service call. In orbit it is a robotics problem.

Meanwhile hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google put data centers next to cheap power, fiber backbones, and cold climates. It is boring. It is practical. It works. Orbital data centers only make sense if we already have large scale industry in space. We do not.

And what really makes these threads irritating is the obvious rage bait framing. Throw up a clickbait title about AI destroying the planet or Big Tech trying to escape Earth and you attract people who already hate AI. The discussion stops being about engineering and economics and turns into ideological noise.

If someone wants to seriously debate energy efficiency or scaling limits, fine. But pretending near Earth orbit is some obvious solution is not serious analysis. It is a cool sci fi concept. It is not a rational infrastructure strategy.

Dumping heat in space is actually hard to do. You'd need huge radiators for radiative emission cooling.

Before even considering radiation damage, hopium $200/kg launch costs mean 15c/kwh electricity. The you add the cost of specialized panels and radiation emitters. At least 20x that of earthly systems.

Shame you can't do some sort of thermoelectric power generation thingie with all the heat from these data centres.