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…
- 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
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.
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.
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.
What they don’t show in a lot of SciFi is the mundane day-to-day stuff (AFAIK, the only shows that came close were Red Dwarf and Firefly.)
Problem is, things break. Connectors come loose. Temperature makes things brittle. Small debris cross pads and create shorts. Most automated manufacturing lines can catch assembly problems, but none have 0% failure rate. This is what post-deployment maintenance is for. Somebody shows up in a van with a bunch of test gear and replacement parts. They diagnose the problem, swap out a cable or board, and the business keeps humming.
Add IoT and fancy telemetry. Monitor sensors and run ML to do predictive analytics. It still requires someone in a cargo van with a bunch of spare parts.
If you put an installation in a remote location, under water, or in space, there are benefits. But you just multiplied the cost of basic maintenance. You can build in redundancies, but a small glitch at a single-point-of-failure could cascade to a catastrophe.
Microsoft and Google tried putting data-centers under water, and after years of trials they nixed it because of these issues. Multiply that for something far out in space.
Only alternative is to build failure into the business model. Something breaks, you just leave it to rot (or burn in the atmosphere) and send another container out. Maybe the finance math works out, but it sure is wasteful.
tl:dr: SciFi is fantasy. A clogged toilet is reality.
Oh right. I already forgot about the underwater data centre hype. Data centre in space would face much of the same challenges so the concept has basically already been tried and failed.
No — makes absolutely no sense what so ever
Unless you’re a lawyer or a tax accountant.
It’s an idea used to justify merging xAI (burning through cash) and SpaceX (more profitable*). It’s not remotely practical due to heat dissipation, general complexity, additional cost, and complete inability to service broken components.
It seemed to work for Arasaka so 🤷♂️
If you find somebody willing to pay some 1000 times more for a computer because it’s rotating around the sky, then yes, it’s profitable. Those “1000” are probably an understatement, but there exists some number that works.
There’s probably a single-digit-billions market there.
For comparison, SpaceX’s space business is a 2-digits-billions business, and they claim they have a 2-digits-trillion market to grow into.
It’s about being outside of any company’s jurisdiction. Same thing for the floating datacenters at sea. Can’t tax it and regulate it if it’s not in any legal country.
