Comment by delichon 2 days ago
NIMBY for data centers is opportunity for SpaceX. When they saturate the demand for communication, data processing demand will be ramping up with no apparent ceiling. The merger between SpaceX and xAI positions them to benefit both from the AI revolution, and from the resistance to it. It's like a hypothetical 19th century textile company that managed to profit from Luddite riots by using them to help move production to Umpa Loompa.
Cooling is the biggest reason for space datacenters, heat is movement of particles and vacuum being an absence of particles, so it's by definition cold.
Naturally the system needs energy, the sun giving radiation convertible to electricity should enable that.
Both parts are documented about ISS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_system_of_the_Inter...
> Cooling is the biggest reason for space datacenters, heat is movement of particles and vacuum being an absence of particles, so it's by definition cold.
That absence of particles also means it is a nearly perfect insulator, with almost no heat transferred from the station to space by contact with space. No convection either.
That leaves cooling by thermal radiation, which is not a very good method.
Do data centers in space actually make sense? I can’t figure out how that’s possible. But some people seem to believe they do(?)
Not even a little; doesn’t pass napkin math. It doesn’t solve any problems while adding a litany of new ones: massive radiators for heat rejection, radiation hardening, and enormous launch + repair costs (assuming repairs are even possible). The idea exists to separate investors from their money; the product is the funding round.
I haven't done the actual math and I might be a few orders of magnitude off but shouldn't electrical resistance drop quite significantly in space, too? (Of course there's the other issue that information processing is an inherently dissipative process because entropy etc.)
there's no repair involved. imagine a series of throwaway satellites on an orbit that essentially leaves them close enough together for effective mesh networking, and probably on an orbit that slowly takes them away from earth.
the compute is used for training, not inference. the redundancy and mesh networking means that if any of them die, it is no big deal.
and an orbit that takes them away from earth means they avoid cluttering up earth's orbital field.
It sounds like you're describing Google's proposal, which I believe is at least feasible (though likely uneconomic) unlike, say, Starcloud's. I don't think you are correct about the orbit, though; Google's proposal lists the satellites at 650 km, which would give them approximately 20 years in orbit without boosts. They list estimated life at 5 years given radiation concerns, so they almost certainly would purposely deorbit them earlier.
> Do data centers in space actually make sense?
No. It's currently a fantasy. Even if the cost of getting payloads to orbit decreased another x100, you still have the issues of radiation and heat dissipation.
this will age poorly. you have both Google, Tesla/X betting on it. They are not stupid and probably have given it way more thought than people's whose paycheques not tied to this have thought about.
This is an ambitious bet, with some possibility of failure but it should say a lot that these companies are investing in them.
I wonder what people think, are these companies so naive?
Edit: Elon, Sundar, Jensen, Jeff are all interested in this. Even China is.
What conspiracy is going on here to explain it? Why would they all put money into this if it is so obvious to all of you that it is not going to work?
Serious question: If you are so sure that this is a big payday, have you put all your net worth into SpaceX? Seems like a no brainer if you fully believe it.
The reason for this "data centers in space" is the same as the "sustained human colony on Mars". It is all pie in the sky ideas to drive valuation and increase Musk's wealth.
Just a small sampling of previous failed Musk promises: - demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York by the end of 2017 - "autonomous ride hailing in probably half the population of the U.S. by the end of the year" - “thousands” of Optimus humanoid robots working in Tesla factories by the end of 2025." - Tesla semi trucks rollout (Pepsi paid for 100 semis in 2017, and deliveries started in 2022, and now 8 years later they have received half of them.)
Everyone were also betting on quantum computing and the hydrogen energy revolution.
My napkin math says that, for a system at around 75°C, you would need about 13,000 square meters of radiators in space to reject 10 MW of heat.
Google is hardly betting on it; they are exploring the feasibility of it and are frank about the engineering challenges: > significant engineering challenges remain, such as thermal management, high-bandwidth ground communications, and on-orbit system reliability.[1]
[1] https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalabl...
I've always assumed that the answer to this would be no. However, I also always assumed that a huge space-based internet system would be both expensive and impractical for bandwidth and latency.
Starlink has largely defied those expectations thanks to their approach to optimize launch costs.
It is possible that I'm overlooking some similar fundamental advancement that would make this less impractical than it sounds. I'm still really skeptical.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy a container ship, convert it to a data center and connect it to a bunch of floating panels?
I wouldn’t overthink the SpaceX / xAI thing. Seems to me it’s a pure financing play to blend two companies owned by the same guy that might look meh on their own to the market but have a compelling narrative about “future growth” together.
All so that the same guy who is already quite rich can continue to run his funny-up money roll-up machine, re-capitalize on a bunch of froth and leave other people holding the bag.
what about Google? It's always the same tired thought ending cliches - companies with "bad" people do obviously "bad" thing to convince idiotic shareholders and prop up the bubble.
i keep seeing this same repeated trope again and again.
Edit: Elon, Sundar, Jensen, Jeff are all interested in this. Even China is.
What conspiracy is going on here to explain it? Why would they all put money into this if it is so obvious to all of you that it is not going to work?
Yep. That was my first thought when I saw the SpaceX & xAI merger news.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/bezos-and-musk-race-to-bring-data-c...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/technology/space-data-cen...
Is this satire? I can't even tell anymore. If so, bravo.
Space doesn't seem like a good place to build datacenters at all. Cooling is going to be an enormous issue, how do you disperse of heat in a vaccuum? Radiators are very ineffective for cooling.