Technology

The thing that people miss in this is that the feature they're seeking by putting servers in space is only to have servers outside of any jurisdiction, with the advantages that it might bring

Well its a great ideal if you happen to be a company with a space program, sounds like a very lucrative venture.

Just tell Elmo to add bigger CPU and GPU fans. That'll work.

Ridiculous, you can't have cloud computing in space, there's no atmosphere!

Whatever happened to resource efficiency, being able to do more for less energy? This whole thing is super unsustainable.

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

Considering the ludicrous price to put each pound of equipment into orbit, I'd like to invite them to send as much hardware as they can in to (high) geostationary orbit so they can find out how well a vacuum does NOT promote radiating heat

Edit: also forgot about solar radiation flipping bits. I love the idea of them having to reboot the machine (if they even can) remotely once ever 15 minutes

Don’t data-centers require massive cooling?

Wouldn't it be cheaper to put it underground?

Mr Musk has to justify that 1.75t valuation somehow

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

They're a great idea if you happen to own a company making AI, a company making rockets, and a company controlling public opinion.

My question is always how the hell are you going to cool them. Do you know hard it is to move heat in a vacuum?

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.

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

There was one study where they set the price of launching at 0 and it's still a lot more expensive to use data centers in space.