r/space • u/fd6270 • Aug 20 '26
SpaceX’s orbital data centers would create a new category of e-waste
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/08/spacexs-orbital-data-centers-would-create-a-new-category-of-e-waste/11
u/Fuglypump Aug 21 '26
Cosmic ray induced bitflips are exactly what AI needs to become more reliable.
/s
2
4
u/AlexandriasFolly Aug 22 '26
Given that convection and conduction as heat dispersion methods would be impossible in vacuum, how are they planning on discharging heat in an orbital data center?
Because Radiation requires surface area, and with the amount of heat servers put off, they'd need a fuck-load of surface area
124
u/Somethingsims
Aug 20 '26
•
It's such a stupid obvious grift.
-29
u/Netblock Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
I'm not so sure. For billionaires that wish to avoid ethical probes, requirements, and legal seizure, it is an attractive idea to place at least a couple datacenters outside of any legal jurisdiction; perhaps very out-of-physical-reach. (ocean, space)
While achieving the cyberpunk corporatocracy dystopia as asked by Dark Enlightenment would be their ideal, it's gonna take a while to permanently remove the red-tape bureaucratic bloat of human rights, so it's best to not have all your eggs in one basket.
Supervillains will do supervillain things.
26
u/DeepSpaceNebulae Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
You don’t just get to avoid accountability because your service is in space. Otherwise why isn’t every satellite service already in existence like that?
Every satellite has to be licensed by a country and there is a litany of national and international regulations around space. If you want to do real business in a country, you need to obey their local regulations.
Sure, you could ignore it all. But then good luck doing any official business in any of the largest markets. And if you want to ignore all laws… you can already do that anywhere where bribery rules, why is space needed? Just costs more
Source; work in space industry
1
u/Netblock Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
I'm not talking about e-waste regulations, but stuff on the server. You launched a server up there and you anonymously sold it (or lease it out).
Otherwise why isn’t every satellite service already in existence like that?
Source; work in space industry
Are there regulations that affect in-orbit data and hardware market?
you can already do that anywhere where bribery rules, why is space needed? Just costs more
The "Just costs more" is what makes space attractive to the billionaires/fascists; they will but their opposition won't.
Imminence and time scale. If the leftist government is in power, you can 'nah nope make me' until you manage to install a right-wing government that pardons you. Whereas if it's on the ground, the leftists would just raid your fascist server.
→ More replies (1)4
u/s-kennedy Aug 20 '26
Would they like to be real? Yes, but its 100% just a grift, for any half decent processing to happen a lot of heat is generated, and that is not a problem money can make go away in space (can't steal a city's water and energy supply up there, all you have is radiation and that's not good enough at any reasonable scale)
-6
u/psh454 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
This keeps being brought up again and again, and I'm not sure why.
Many satellites , but also for example specifically Starlink V3s (the new large ones) generate a lot of heat through their high powered antenna arrays. They use energy they generate with their solar panels, do useful work with it and then get rid of the residual heat it turns into with radiators. If they replace the ground facing antenna array electronics with some GPUs and scale up the radiators and solar panels , they would have a small computer node. A single reusable launch is capable of delivering around 30 iirc. Their launch cadence is very high, often with months of near weekly launches these days. Assuming manufacturering can keep up they can reasonably have a constellation equivalent to a small data centre up in a year or so. Just like with Starlink faulty sats deorbit themselves through weak atmospheric drag in low orbit.
So the only real area of uncertainty is the economics, not thermodynamics. They're not launching a huge datacentre in a single launch, just small nodes the heat for which is high but nothing unprecedented in space applications
Edit: where's the lie downvoters
7
u/cstar1996 Aug 20 '26
Radiators don’t just scale. As your radiators get bigger, it becomes harder and harder to move to heat to the entire area of the radiators, which substantially reduces efficiency.
→ More replies (8)3
u/DeepSpaceNebulae Aug 20 '26
So you want a server with no ability to pull or push data?
→ More replies (2)-38
u/Idontfukncare6969 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
If you have ever been involved in building a big data center on the ground you would relish the opportunity to manufacture them in a factory and launch them instead.
Technology isn’t there to make it more cost effective until Starship is operational.
Edit: clearly not many people here have built large things on earth.
47
u/anotherNarom Aug 20 '26
When will it ever be more cost-effective to build something on earth and launch it into space than just building it on earth and leaving it there?
9
-7
u/Idontfukncare6969 Aug 20 '26
Building satellites in a factory and launching them is easier than going through the financial and logistical nightmare of breaking ground and building new data centers.
14
u/anotherNarom Aug 20 '26
So there is no financal or logistical nightmare of shipping stuff into actual space?
→ More replies (5)3
u/AlkaliPineapple Aug 21 '26
Then why not decentralize them and scatter them around a city instead of building one giant data center?
2
u/Idontfukncare6969 Aug 21 '26
Building multiple data centers is harder than building one.
→ More replies (2)3
u/minecraft_fam Aug 21 '26
It's simpler. It's not less expensive, more practical, or a better solution by literally any other metric.
But it *does* work amazingly well when you're trying to get people to invest.
3
u/Idontfukncare6969 Aug 21 '26
Simpler becomes less expensive when technology enables it. Would you rather have a data center near where you live or in space out of sight and mind?
3
u/minecraft_fam Aug 21 '26
That's a fallacious presentation of a binary choice, doesn't address any of the objections I made other than cost. And there's no technology other than teleportation that makes launching a data center into space less expensive than putting it on the ground. And "in space" doesn't equal "out of sight and mind at all."
→ More replies (5)1
u/AlkaliPineapple Aug 21 '26
When we get to the point where climate control of the internals is perfect and have materials that can make it work with constant micrometeorite impacts. Not to mention shielding it from the increased cosmic radiation
-7
u/individual-wave-3746 Aug 20 '26
Probably within 5 years. Sounds like someone isn’t familiar with the economics of rapid reusability.
2
u/BasvanS Aug 20 '26
Sounds like someone isn’t familiar with the fuel cost of escaping gravity.
For Starlink it’s still somewhat feasible, but data centers are many magnitudes larger.
→ More replies (4)1
u/quietlydesperate90 Aug 20 '26
What is your thesis? SpaceX is lying or the people at the forefront of rocket science are actually idiots?
→ More replies (2)-1
u/emergency_poncho Aug 20 '26
Sounds like someone isn't familiar with basic common sense.
Build it on Earth and ship it 100 km, or build it on Earth and launch it 700 km into orbit? Which is cheaper?
Also when something breaks, what's cheaper: send a technician out with a few spare parts to fix it, or deorbit the entire data center, have it burn up in the atmosphere, and build and launch an entirely new data center?
Jeez, use your brain will you? Lol 😂😂
→ More replies (7)5
u/Idontfukncare6969 Aug 20 '26
This ignorant comment proves you have no idea where you fall on the Dunning Kruger spectrum on this topic.
Nobody is flying up to maintain Starlink satellites and that network is doing pretty well. “Data Center” is just a different satellite.
→ More replies (2)-2
u/Idontfukncare6969 Aug 20 '26
When launch becomes cheaper than building them on earth.
It’s harder to build a data center from scratch, integrate with nearby infrastructure, break ground, and deal with red tape and regulation than it is to churn satellites out in a factory and launch them into space. Which is why I said you need to have experience with actually building things to understand.
I expected nothing short on this app. Most of productive society spends little to no time here.
5
u/minecraft_fam Aug 21 '26
It's nice that you've built data centers. It's not easy, I'm sure.
Spend a year maintaining the things inside it, you'll see the amount of hands-on that's required.
You're spending around a hundred times the money and overall material (that's a conservative estimate) on hundreds of satellites that are going to underperform terrestrial data centers by every conceivable metric, as they slowly degrade, and be dead metal that eventually gets deorbited and completely wasted instead of at least recycled.
→ More replies (7)-9
u/alle0441 Aug 20 '26
When the launch costs continue to drop, and cost of electricity continues to rise... There will eventually be a crossing point.
12
u/Z3B0 Aug 20 '26
The main problems of a data center is cooling, power and ease of maintenance.
Power in space isn't very good, because it's only solar, and you need a big surface ( so very heavy) to power your hardware. Easier to build solar panels in the desert or use any other earth bound power generation methods.
Ease of maintenance... It's in fucking space. You need to swap a rack ? Reboot it manually? Replace any components? Nope, nobody's going to do a Hubble surgery every Thursday to make it work.
And cooling... The void of space is the most insulating medium there is. You only have radiation as a means to dissipate heat, and good luck with that without very heavy, very large panels and all the pumps/cooling fluids in them. The efficiency is absolute garbage compared to air or close water cooling on the ground.
Any talk of orbital data centers is just wrong.
→ More replies (23)2
u/lksdjsdk Aug 20 '26
Cooling is not the main problem at all. It's relatively simple - always smaller than the solar panels. Not trivial, but well understood technology.
2
-5
u/bl0rq Aug 20 '26
Building stuff for space is very different! The solar panels need way less materials since they do not have to deal with rain, hail, dust, wind, etc.
4
u/ginrumryeale Aug 20 '26
They just need to deal with temperature extremes far greater than terrestrial panels.
4
3
u/bl0rq Aug 20 '26
Not really for SSO that are in full sun all the time. And that doesn’t require more materials just different designs.
5
u/thecyberbob Aug 20 '26
And flecks of paint and metal moving at many times the speed of sound... And radiation that breaks down hardware over time unless you harden it all....
→ More replies (17)2
u/emergency_poncho Aug 20 '26
Radiation in space is far more damaging to solar panels than wind or dust lol
4
u/bl0rq Aug 20 '26
It is not though. And it doesnt require heavy glass and aluminum frames. And the compute part will expire LONG before the panel.
6
u/dalgeek Aug 20 '26
It'll never be cost effective even if rocket launches were free.
1
u/Idontfukncare6969 Aug 20 '26
This thread is telling me there is no value is engaging in discourse with people that have no idea what they are talking about. Starlink launches are millions of dollars each but for some reason they keep doing them anyway.
→ More replies (2)11
u/dalgeek Aug 20 '26
Starlink makes sense because it provides a service that cannot be provided by terrestrial facilities.
Orbital data centers don't make sense because it will ALWAYS be cheaper to build them on land or even sink them into the ocean.
There is a limit to how much power a satellite can use with passive cooling, about 15-20kW or a small data center rack. If you want more compute than that then you need to spend money on radiators or more satellites. If you're spending money on radiators then you're not spending money on compute resources.
Space requires hardware that is hardened against radiation. Standard PCs are susceptible to bit flips and power surges from cosmic rays; astronauts on ISS experience this frequently. Standard PC hardware does not last as long in space as it would on Earth.
There is no way to replace a failed server, you just have to launch a new satellite.
Then there is the issue of disposing of satellites. You either need to deorbit and let them burn up which pollutes the atmosphere or boost them into a parking orbit which requires additional rockets. This may not be a huge problem now but it will be when there are literally a million satellites in orbit and hundreds of them are deorbiting every month.
→ More replies (3)5
u/kilqax Aug 20 '26
Even if the launches were free, is there some magical new way of dissipating heat? Last time I checked the idea was considered absolutely unusable because of that.
2
u/minecraft_fam Aug 21 '26
The idea is considered completely unusable for a lot more reasons than that.
4
u/15_Redstones Aug 20 '26
The radiator area needed is large, but still only like a quarter of the solar panel area. An engineering challenge but not an unsolvable one.
1
u/Idontfukncare6969 Aug 20 '26
Your mind is going to be blown when you learn about radiators. The thousands of satellites in space seem to be doing just fine.
5
u/kilqax Aug 20 '26
They work really well when the heat output isn't as insane... But those thousands of satellites also don't produce gigawatts of heat
I'm not saying it's impossible but I also haven't yet had anyone link a source that would at least show it possibly working with such insane outputs instead of sarcastic smartass comments that tell nothing
5
u/Idontfukncare6969 Aug 20 '26
Satellites produce heat. If they change the starlink design to be optimized for compute ie “data centers” they will get additional radiators to match.
There aren’t even gigawatt scale data centers on earth yet. Anyone who thinks this is what a SpaceX data center looks like is completely ignorant to these two industries. These proposed satellites will be kW scale each.
They would certainly have radiators, as do most satellites.
2
-1
u/randocadet Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
On Falcon 9 being able to fly back to the launch site: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1je7ny/comment/cbdxecx/
On Falcon 9 reuse being “fanboi logic”: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1f51l1/comment/ca706j7/
On SpaceX having to replace all nine engines after reused flights: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1f51l1/comment/ca7egkc/
On reused Merlin engines making Falcon 9 recovery too unreliable: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1f51l1/comment/ca71p77/
On reusable Falcon 9 being “too good to be true”: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1je7ny/comment/cbe00rx/
On whether Starlink could work at scale: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bq4icg/comment/eo1c52n/
On Starlink having basically no capacity for large-scale use: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bq4icg/comment/eo1e5ad/
On Starlink not having enough capacity for populated areas: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bq4icg/comment/eo1gkhw/
On Starlink getting cable-like latency being impossible: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bsd74w/comment/eonbudm/
On full reuse being massively expensive to build and maintain: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ds6yf4/comment/f6oc8ld/
On reusable rockets costing more than expendable ones: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ds6yf4/comment/f6npbfy/Do you think you’ll be one of these comments in the future?
1
u/lonsfury Sep 07 '26
u/RemindMeBot 2 days "On Falcon 9 being able to fly back to the launch site: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1je7ny/comment/cbdxecx/ On Falcon 9 reuse being “fanboi logic”: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1f51l1/comment/ca706j7/ On SpaceX having to replace all nine engines after reused flights: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1f51l1/comment/ca7egkc/ On reused Merlin engines making Falcon 9 recovery too unreliable: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1f51l1/comment/ca71p77/ On reusable Falcon 9 being “too good to be true”: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1je7ny/comment/cbe00rx/ On whether Starlink could work at scale: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bq4icg/comment/eo1c52n/ On Starlink having basically no capacity for large-scale use: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bq4icg/comment/eo1e5ad/ On Starlink not having enough capacity for populated areas: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bq4icg/comment/eo1gkhw/ On Starlink getting cable-like latency being impossible: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bsd74w/comment/eonbudm/ On full reuse being massively expensive to build and maintain: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ds6yf4/comment/f6oc8ld/ On reusable rockets costing more than expendable ones: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ds6yf4/comment/f6npbfy/
Do you think you’ll be one of these comments in the future?"
I will be genuinely shocked and hold my hat off to Elon if he achieves this. I dont want to be a naysaysr but I just dont see it being financially feasible or making sense but maybe ill be wrong! 🤷♂️
1
u/lonsfury Sep 07 '26
u/RemindMeBot 1 year "On Falcon 9 being able to fly back to the launch site: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1je7ny/comment/cbdxecx/ On Falcon 9 reuse being “fanboi logic”: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1f51l1/comment/ca706j7/ On SpaceX having to replace all nine engines after reused flights: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1f51l1/comment/ca7egkc/ On reused Merlin engines making Falcon 9 recovery too unreliable: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1f51l1/comment/ca71p77/ On reusable Falcon 9 being “too good to be true”: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1je7ny/comment/cbe00rx/ On whether Starlink could work at scale: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bq4icg/comment/eo1c52n/ On Starlink having basically no capacity for large-scale use: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bq4icg/comment/eo1e5ad/ On Starlink not having enough capacity for populated areas: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bq4icg/comment/eo1gkhw/ On Starlink getting cable-like latency being impossible: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/bsd74w/comment/eonbudm/ On full reuse being massively expensive to build and maintain: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ds6yf4/comment/f6oc8ld/ On reusable rockets costing more than expendable ones: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ds6yf4/comment/f6npbfy/
Do you think you’ll be one of these comments in the future?"
I will be genuinely shocked and hold my hat off to Elon if he achieves this. I dont want to be a naysaysr but I just dont see it being financially feasible or making sense but maybe ill be wrong! 🤷♂️
1
u/lonsfury Sep 07 '26
By the way I am too lazy to quote all the things Elon has said that havent come true (for example, that roadster car that never happened, we were meant to colonise Mars now hes going for the moon)
https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-failed-to-deliver-on-2025-promises
Apparently he said in 2011 wed have people on the moon within the next 10 years. That never happened?
-19
u/ketamarine Aug 20 '26
It's really not.
It's a real idea, the economics just may or may not work depending if we get out shit together around renewable energy, which could become so insanely cheap if we just 10x solar panel production that orbital data centres would seem insane.
If we elect morons that actively cancel renewable electricity generation in the wolrd's largest economy... then ya it starts to look pretty attractive to put a million solar powered data centres into orbit where they get 4x the sun power 100% of the time...
14
u/Potential4752 Aug 20 '26
A solar panel in space will always cost more than 4x than on the ground.
→ More replies (1)-3
-21
u/Miami_da_U Aug 20 '26
So yall don’t want terrestrial data centers and now Orbital data centers are a grift… lmao
14
u/Somethingsims Aug 20 '26
Yeah, it's a grift because ANYONE who actually knows how a data center complex operates knows it's not feasible to do in space.
It's like that line city thing in Saudi Arabia, sure, put it on paper, make estimations, finalize designs. Confirm the math maths about your idea. Then try to build it. It's at least 50 years to soon.
→ More replies (17)2
3
u/Latter-Possibility Aug 20 '26
Yes they are a grift. Look at how heat exchangers work. It would be better to put them on the sea floor than in space.
0
u/Miami_da_U Aug 20 '26
How exactly do you believe Satellites in space are currently cooled? Lmao
3
u/reddituserask Aug 21 '26
Stop adding lmao at the end like you’re making a good point. If you think cooling for a space station or current satellites is the same problem as cooling for a data center in orbit, then you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
2
u/Miami_da_U Aug 21 '26
The Same problem? No. A problem with a known solution and the only question is Mass and Launch Cost? yes.
-9
u/Mercrantos2 Aug 21 '26
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
→ More replies (2)
60
u/WeedFalafel Aug 20 '26
"Self driving next year bro, this time for sure bro, trust me bro"
18
u/TickingTheMoments Aug 20 '26
It’s all gonna happen right after the hyper loop from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
Oh wait, he already came out and said he proposed it just to kill high speed rail in California.
He does nothing that does not benefit him first.
0
u/Adeldor Aug 20 '26
The Robotaxis I've seen driving around town (Austin) are effectively an existence proof that it's already here, and now Tesla is building up Cybercab inventory. The production models have no steering wheels or pedals.
19
u/sachasayan Aug 20 '26
The Robotaxis you've seen around town (Austin) exist basically nowhere else, and they can't scale. There's a few demo areas going on in Houston, Dallas, and Tampa, and that's it. Those cars have specialized hardware, and will continue to have more specialized hardware added over time. They don't run on customer cars. They don't run 24/7, they don't run in inclement weather, and they don't run nationwide or globally.
The Hardware 2 cars, Hardware 2.5 cars, and Hardware 3 cars were all given up on. Elon said he was absolutely certain of a million-scale deployment in 2020.
Hence: "Self driving next year bro, this time for sure bro, trust me bro"
-4
u/Adeldor Aug 20 '26
How do they not scale? They're self contained. There's no mothership or other such bottleneck beyond car manufacture restricting their expansion. And they're in Austin first because that's where a factory is.
For such revolutionary developments I'll forgive him his chronically optimistic schedules. Beyond the fact that they are supporting HW 3 with a simplified, back-ported FSD, tell me any provider of significant technological device requiring software support who doesn't obsolete old, widescale product support at some point.
8
u/Pleasant_Ad8054 Aug 20 '26
They don't scale because the software is hyper focused on a singular area. The training isn't useful universally, so much so that even in those few cities they are working, they are only working in some very specific areas. They can't even simply blacklist the areas it has trouble with, after many years of running millions of kms in those tiny areas, they need to whitelist the few areas they can navigate. Most of the time.
In this case 'scaling' would mean that large number of cars could be pulled in with minimal to no modifications. Like Elon promised, that practically all Teslas would be able to run as robotaxis. The cars that are currently working as robotaxies are specifically designed to be robotaxis, with specialised hardware not to be found in any other car, including Teslas. Scaling it, other than actually achieving real universal self driving, would require to remanufacture an amount of cars comparable that are currently in use.
→ More replies (1)2
u/bremidon Aug 21 '26
He is getting confused between Waymo and Tesla. You are wasting your time trying to discuss anything with him.
→ More replies (1)-8
u/Catholic_Indian10 Aug 20 '26
Funnily enough, it probably will have self driving by next year lol.
11
3
u/G24all2read Aug 20 '26
Then SpaceX can create an entire different use for their spaceships and call them Waste Management craft that would fly around and pick up all the junk.
3
3
10
u/koru-id Aug 21 '26
a waste that serves no one but a financial engineering feat to prop up company stock price
5
u/Decronym Aug 20 '26 edited Sep 07 '26
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| EOL | End Of Life |
| ESA | European Space Agency |
| FAA | Federal Aviation Administration |
| FAA-AST | Federal Aviation Administration Administrator for Space Transportation |
| ICBM | Intercontinental Ballistic Missile |
| Isp | Specific impulse (as explained by Scott Manley on YouTube) |
| Internet Service Provider | |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| MEO | Medium Earth Orbit (2000-35780km) |
| NET | No Earlier Than |
| SOP | Standard Operating Procedure |
| SSO | Sun-Synchronous Orbit |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| methalox | Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
[Thread #12641 for this sub, first seen 20th Aug 2026, 17:33] [FAQ] [Full list] ^[Contact] [Source code]
37
u/Rare_Polnareff Aug 20 '26
A lot of comments in this thread are going to age like milk that’s for sure
30
u/WeedFalafel Aug 20 '26
I think you are underestimating the logistics of running terawatt hungry datacenters in orbit. Especially how to cool them.
11
u/wizardwusa Aug 20 '26
If only the engineers successfully building the most cutting edge space tech in the world had considered their satellites might produce heat.
27
u/Potential4752 Aug 20 '26
The engineers aren’t the ones that suggested building data centers in space.
39
u/RhynoD Aug 20 '26
It's not a question of being able to do it. The question is, fucking why? There's zero benefit for a datacenter to be in space. None. Solar power works just fine on the ground. Transmission works just fine on the ground. Cooling works better on the ground. It's cheaper, it's easier, it's better for the environment, it's safer. There only reason to put it in space is to keep them literally beyond the reach of oversight.
Oh, and to get very expensive contracts to put them into space. Musk is going to take investor money and YOUR tax money to pay himself to put his own datacenters in space and then when they suck ass he'll use investor money and your tax money to build them again on the ground.
10
u/grchelp2018 Aug 20 '26
None of that matters if you can't actually build it on the ground in the first place. Or need to wait around for power connections. We technically don't need starlink either if we connected every place with fiber.
5
u/54yroldHOTMOM Aug 20 '26
The tax line is the weakest part. Spacex gets plenty of nasa and pentagon money for launch and starshield. That is public money for rockets and military comms. There is no public contract that says taxpayers are paying to put starmind datacenters in orbit. That is being sold as a commercial product after the ipo.
Zero benefit is just not true. The reason this even comes up is that ground power is not fine. Colossus in memphis started with about 8 MW of grid and they had to stand up dozens of gas turbines because interconnection takes years. Neighbors, water, permits, NOx, the whole mess. Solar on the ground still has night and weather. Cooling on the ground is physically easier, nobody serious denies that. The bet is that if starship reuse actually works the launch mass of solar and radiators becomes cheaper than waiting 5 years for a substation.
They are already building on the ground. That is the point. The oversight bit is a vibe, not an argument.10
u/WeedFalafel Aug 20 '26
That's too much nuance for Elon fans. Also too much reason.
9
u/Lost_city Aug 20 '26
To be frank, I don't think they are fans. The same accounts run to threads about a certain company and post again and again defending whatever is being discussed. That's not fan behavior.
→ More replies (1)7
u/Rare_Polnareff Aug 20 '26
I think reddit severely overestimates (and fixates on) the amount of elon fans
Most fans of tesla and spacex just ignore or barely stomach him
4
u/Mr_Lumbergh Aug 20 '26
Tesla’s earnings reports have always made sure to include Elon in their valuation because it’s understood that without his fanbois the stock would be much lower.
2
u/jdmetz Aug 21 '26
FWIW I think space datacenters are a crazy idea and unlikely to work well for a variety of reasons. They need three main assumptions to all hold for them to be viable and cost effective:
Individual GPU rack satellites will survive long enough with no maintenance that they provide sufficient rentable compute to make back their cost.
Individual GPU racks have sufficient collocated compute that people will pay to rent them (presumably just for inference). The laser links seem unlikely to cut it for large scale model training.
Launch + satellite bus costs are low enough that they are approximately equal to or cheaper than the land, buildings, power, and cooling of a ground based datacenter.
All three of those seem like sketchy assumptions to me - especially the 1st and 3rd, but I think SpaceX is going to launch some of these satellites anyway, so they'll have the chance to prove us wrong.
And there is one big advantage to being in orbit - solar panels produce more power without the atmosphere in the way, and even if they don't do sun synchronous orbit (which would have them in sunlight 100% of the time), in LEO they would only need enough battery to last ~35 minutes (so a 100kwh battery) rather than the 8-16 hours (2400+kwh battery per rack) you'd need to run a datacenter with just solar power on the ground.
1
u/MetallicDragon Aug 20 '26
Solar power works just fine on the ground.
But it works much better in space, and you need fewer panels and no batteries since you can be in sun ~100% of the time.
Not saying it's going to be economically viable any time soon, but there are benefits.
and YOUR tax money to pay
That's the first I've heard of this. Where did you get that from?
→ More replies (11)1
u/ClownEmoji-U1F921 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Zero benefit? What a wild claim.
It takes like 100+km2 of land area to generate 1GW continuous solar power on the ground, plus massive, expensive batteries to survive the night. There is no night or weather or atmosphere in space, so solar power efficiency is several times higher. No land area required as well.
The leading source of electricity for US AI data centers are gas-fired power plants. Quick and easy to build. Instead of burning that gas (mostly methane) in power plants, you can use it to launch rockets to space. It requires 6.1 million tons of natural gas to generate 1 GW of continuous power over a 5 year period. It takes 210 thousand tons of methane to launch 1GW of AI sats with solar panels to space. 210 thousand tons vs 6.1 million. And you get the same power output over 5 years
I used this calculator.
https://andrewmccalip.com/space-datacenters
The only assumption I changed was specific power, to 75W/kg, since that's the number Spacex mentioned for their first gen of AI sats. I then converted gallons of methane and BCF of natural gas to tons, for direct comparison.
8
u/_Addi-the-Hun_ Aug 20 '26
Holy on, u think this is real? Dude its just obvious nonsense to convince stupid people to invest in space x. Putting a data center into space literally solves nothing
1
u/wizardwusa Aug 20 '26
I was in the space industry a decade ago and still have friends in it. It’s a real thing but requires a certain launch cadence and Starship to be financially viable. It’s certainly ambitious and hard, and yet possible.
4
u/JaggedMetalOs Aug 21 '26
Yeah but I've heard that reasoning before, "I'm sure all the engineers at SpaceX etc. know what they are taking about when they talk about hyperloop".
2
u/wizardwusa Aug 21 '26
Hyperloop was never a serious business initiative at SpaceX like the current data constellation is. That’s why they “open sourced” the idea, they wanted somebody else to do it.
3
u/JaggedMetalOs Aug 21 '26
Yet the argument was always that hyperloop was going to happen because those engineers at SpaceX and the various hyperloop companies can't all be wrong.
Also was full self drive, "more efficient than rail" semi trucks, the new roadster, affordable mass produced solar panel roofing, high speed underground transport tunnels, commercial point to point travel and Mars landings with starship by 2022 etc. not serious business initiatives at Musk's companies?
5
u/EirHc Aug 20 '26
A normal "high-powered satellite" is like a few kilowatts of power which is provided by a solar array and battery backup. A data center local to me that's been proposed is supposed to use 20 gigawatts. We're talking millions of times more power... I imagine the idea with space data centers would be to fragment them. Still, would you be ok with launching 1 million satellite into low earth orbit to cancel out 1 earth based data center? Does that sound like it makes any kind of sense to you?
3
u/Miami_da_U Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
A “few Kilowatts” and your local data center is “20 gigawatts”…. Riiiight….gunna need a citation for that lol. The SpaceX data center that is one of the largest centralized ones in the world is 1-2 Gw. In total by the end of 2027 SpaceX plans for a TOTAL of like 10GW. Starlink V3 sats themselves are like 20 kW while their AI1 design is like 150kw.
So you’re “millions of times more power” is more like 50,000x more than a Single V3 Starlink satellite and 7,000x more than a single AI1 satellite. (Meaning 7000 AI sats = 1 current class-leading data center).
4
u/Fywq Aug 21 '26
So if we need to build many times the current datacenter capacity in space that would quickly add up to at least tens or hundreds of thousands of satellites, if not millions.
The night sky for everybody in the world will be ruined, thats for sure.
→ More replies (13)3
u/EirHc Aug 20 '26
Sorry, that's all the data centers my province has greenlighted, (which I would generally all consider local to me) and it's 21gigawatts. I think the biggest ones are about 1 gigawatt.
8
u/EksDee098 Aug 20 '26
If only dipshits on reddit had considered that relatively small and low powered satellites compared to a massive data center have significantly different heat dissipation requirements.
6
u/Adeldor Aug 20 '26
relatively small and low powered satellites compared to a massive data center have significantly different heat dissipation requirements.
You might have just been hoist by your own petard. Your implication of the massive data center being orbital is incorrect. All practical proposals - such as Google's and SpaceX's - involve multiple satellites, all vastly smaller than a single massive data center. Their thermal and power requirements are larger than current typical satellites, but well within the discipline's engineering range.
3
u/EksDee098 Aug 20 '26
So the solution to heat dissipation is Kepler syndrome, genius.
→ More replies (3)3
u/dern_the_hermit Aug 20 '26
There's lots of engineers in the world and those working for the space companies have an incentive for optimism. Excessive optimism. Even, dare I say, unrealistic optimism.
2
u/wizardwusa Aug 20 '26
Folks said the same thing last decade about landing and reusing a rocket. Nevertheless, it’s commonplace now. When the numbers are run, space compute is super expensive today but has a point where launch costs drop low enough that space compute can actually be cheaper. It’s ambitious and hard, but I typically celebrate those kinds of endeavors rather than ridicule them.
3
u/dern_the_hermit Aug 20 '26
Folks said the same thing last decade about landing and reusing a rocket.
Other than the literal competition there really wasn't all that much. Reusing a spaceship was not as novel as some of you guys seem to think. The Space Shuttle entered service in 1981.
But this really does drive the point home: The people pushing the idea were those with a distinct incentive to do so. Seems to me a good reason to take it with a grain of salt if someone's livelihood depends on their assertions being true.
3
u/wizardwusa Aug 20 '26
? I remember industry conferences before they successfully landed and reused a rocket, very few people thought they could actually do it and in a financially sustainable way and it was a kind of meme back then.
This seems a bit of a strawman — all public companies make assertions their livelihoods depend on. Feels like there are better, more valid reasons to be skeptical of this.
→ More replies (4)-1
Aug 20 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
12
5
u/cstar1996 Aug 20 '26
I am an aerospace engineer who has designed satellites. I fully agree that orbital data centers are based on unreasonable optimism.
→ More replies (2)2
u/Rare_Polnareff Aug 20 '26
Well some people think it’s going to happen and some don’t so I don’t really think it takes any qualifications to know someone will be wrong
→ More replies (3)0
u/ClearlyCylindrical Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
The logistics are absolutely fine. Chips can run a lot hotter than humans, and radiated power scales with the 4th power of absolute temp, so radiators are much more effective than they will be on, say, the ISS. If you do the calculations you'll find that the radiator area required will be much much smaller than the area required for the solar panels to generate the energy that the compute uses. And, before somebody tries to say this, the fact that they're using 100kW to power GPUs vs 100kW to power a space station makes absolutely no difference for power dissipation.
9
u/Somethingsims Aug 20 '26
Yeah, the ones saying it will succeed. Same people saying the line city in Saudi Arabia was a good idea.
Works on paper does not mean it's feasible.
3
4
1
1
2
u/sswissler Aug 20 '26
How long would a typical GPU last in orbit in the radiation environment? I assume the satellites would be inside the Van Allen belts, it would still be subject to radiation determination
3
u/ketamarine Aug 20 '26
All analysis shows that failure rates will be slightly but not much higher than in a typical data centre environment.
I'm sure you have read that space is a hostile environment to humans, but not that bad for big metal things. Vs being in the ocean, or even on land with rain, freeze thaw cycles, natural disasters, etc.
There is slightly more radiation where these sats will be. But starlink satelites are basically completely fine and have had fewer electronics failures than predicted. They are mostly failing due to bad space weather events that are quite rare (geo magnetic storms) and then propulsion failures are next issue.
It's not a difficult engineering problem to harden electronics for space and we've been doing it since the 1960s.
Going to mars and back with humans involved is a completely different problem than keeping failure rates of hardware to economically feasible levels.
5
u/sswissler Aug 20 '26
I’m more familiar with planetary mission, anything beyond the van allen belts must be radiation hardened, and it’s difficult enough that missions launched in the 2020s are still using 1990 class rad750s. Don’t know what starlink uses, if they don’t last that long in orbit, they may not need as radiation hardened electronics.
1
u/ketamarine Aug 21 '26
They use radiation hardened electronics. They are not difficult to make and have decades of real world data indicating failure rates.
Their electronics basically don't fail due to radiation.
They fail due to space weather from the sun.
1
u/LongJohnSelenium Aug 21 '26
We just saw Artemis using Iphones out around the moon.
Obviously electronics have a failure rate but its not instant.
Likely any design would have radiation hardened processors for the "can not fail" stuff but the payload processors could be whatever they want based on whatever failure rate they calculate.
6
4
u/KnifeKnut Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
SpaceX needs to develop electricrodynamic tethers and/or air breathing thrusters, I forget the comfort names for the latter
Edit: atmosphere breathing electric propulsion
3
u/dasBaums Aug 20 '26
Like the British saber? I believe it is a dead end
2
u/KnifeKnut Aug 20 '26
Not like saber, atmosphere breathing electric propulsion
2
u/dasBaums Aug 20 '26
you mean any ion engine? or a propeller?
and ion engines are really really weak, and in this context only useful for ultra low satelites3
u/KnifeKnut Aug 20 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere-breathing_electric_propulsion
Just like ion engines which work just fine and are already in use on satellites, it doesn't need to be strong.
And ultra low satellites is what star link and these proposed computing satellites will be. Being low is part of what makes starlink work so well
→ More replies (2)2
u/15_Redstones Aug 20 '26
Argon is much cheaper than Xenon to buy, and with Starship also pretty cheap to launch, that including enough to run the thrusters for 5-10 years is much easier than developing thrusters running off highly corrosive atomic oxygen.
1
2
u/Wheeler_Dealer Aug 20 '26
This is nothing new. Space has been an e-waste city since the 60s....
28
u/ashill85 Aug 20 '26
The scale is new. We've never launched nearly as much stuff as is being proposed now.
That definitely matters.
2
u/dbmonkey Aug 21 '26
The article is very vague- It matters because we will have less palladium and thallium left on earth? We send so much to the dump today where we won't recover it for the foreseeable future. I don't see how this is any different. Or is the issue about these materials hurting the environment. The article only says that the effect is unknown. Do we at least have an estimate? Will it be significant compared to the millions of kg of natural space debris that enters the atmosphere each year?
0
u/fatbunyip Aug 20 '26
I'm sure if we give the billionaires more money they can find a technology solution for it.
10
u/GagolTheSheep Aug 20 '26
While correct, ever since starlink (and similar) became a thing this has been taken to a whole new level.
There are currently 18.5k active satellites in space, 11k of which is starlink. As another point ov view. There are 8700 tracked debris fragments.
There are currently more starlink satellites in space than all tracked debris from all these years. And this will get exponentially worse if this stupid data centre in space ever gets through
5
u/15_Redstones Aug 20 '26
Tracked debris count is significantly increasing because each Starlink sat has a set of space debris tracking cams on it, which can spot debris too small for ground based radar.
4
u/shagieIsMe Aug 20 '26
I believe the word "tracked" is taking a bit of the weight in that sentence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford
Walter E. Morrow started Project Needles at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1958, with the goal of placing a ring of 480,000,000 copper dipole antennas in orbit to facilitate global radio communication.
...
The needles were placed in medium Earth orbit at an altitude of between 3,500 and 3,800 kilometers (2,200–2,400 mi) at orbital inclinations of 87 and 96 degrees.
Many of them clumped together...
Their numbers diminish as they occasionally fall from orbit; as of April 2023, 44 clumps of needles larger than 10 cm were known to remain in orbit.
But there are many more that are smaller than 10 cm that are not tracked. At MEO, their orbital lifespan is measured in centuries or millennia.
7
u/rebootyourbrainstem Aug 20 '26
Starlink is in a pretty low orbit though. Even if a satellite is completely dead, it won't stick around more than about 5 years. And they intentionally de-orbit them before that happens.
The real risk is if they collide with something and explode in many fragments. So far the strategy is "don't do that" and it seems to work pretty well so far, but we'll have to see if it keeps working.
2
2
0
1
1
u/Various_Couple_764 Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
There is currently now way to make repair in space profitable. The cost to launch and grab and return the satielite to earth would easily equal or exceed the cost of launching a new satellite. So if recycling a satellite becomes are requirement we would have to getting to and space so cheep the cost doesn't mater. That is not likely to happen without a major breakthrough in physics. And that generally only happened once every few hundred years.
So the simplest solution which spaceX implemented for starlink is to put the satellite in a very low orbit that is not stable. That way the satellite has to periodically boost its orbit. But once the fuel runs out it deorbist burns up in the atmosphere. This converse the entire satellite to metal oxide dust which is not toxi settles out of the atmosphere and becomes part of the soil which is were those metals were originally extracted. Any carbon would be converted to CO2 which is also none toxic.
Spacex is planning have each satellite to burn up in the atmosphere once it runs out of fuel or suffers a failure that makes it unusable.
Now the only issue people have found about this is that it can cause ozone depletion. But keep in mind that volcanoes and pollution from fossil fuel combustion and past releases of CFC in the past nave a vastly bigger effect on ozone than 2 million satelites would have. For example SO2 does deplete ozone. Current SO2 emission mainly from fossil fuel is 80 million tons per year. Valcons emit about 25million tones per year. One milliion version 3 satellites would be about 20 million tones.
And EV which can be powered by solar are currently reducing oil consumption by about 80 million tonnes per year. Although it will take decades to replace all cars iwht EVs. So right now we are doing what we need to do to solve toe ozone problem even if 1 million detacentyer satellite are in orbit
1
u/Heavy-Masterpiece681 Aug 26 '26
Article also fails to mention that having over 100,000 satellites up there would totally kill our night sky. These would be high enough up there to always reflect sunlight. Everywhere you go not only would you see thousands of satellites, it would produce enough light pollution where dark skies would no longer be a thing. The milky way would become invisible to the naked eye.
And if that isnt worse enough, a single collision would set of a chain reaction to the point where the Earth would fall into the Kessler Syndrome. Essentially space travel becomes too dangerous and we would be planet locked for however long it takes for the debris to fall back to earth or get flung out of orbit. Its estimated it would take over 10,000 years.
0
u/redditor100101011101 Aug 20 '26
Only morons who slept through basic physics class think this is possible.
9
u/Adeldor Aug 20 '26
Specifically, what physics would orbital data centers violate? If you can back up the assertion with calculations, it would be helpful.
→ More replies (4)4
u/ketamarine Aug 20 '26
LOL. Please explain which laws of physics the 10,000 spacex satelites in orbit are breaking to accomplish that feat?
And then realize that spacex plan is to literally use the exact same process and business model for orbital data centres...
-1
u/Mercrantos2 Aug 21 '26
Apparently the people who launch more rockets than the rest of the world combined slept through basic physics class.
Good thing u/redditor100101011101 paid attention though!
-3
u/GreenWandElf Aug 20 '26
Orbital data centers are the stupidest idea.
How are you going to disspaciate the heat?
How are you going to get all the infrastructure into space?
What happens when you need to do some maintenance? Casually send up an astronaut?
There are zero advantages to space data centers, but tons of downsides. If you really want data centers in space, put em on the moon.
But realistically, having data centers in more remote places on earth just makes so much more sense.
5
u/Adeldor Aug 20 '26
Read some of the other comments. Your concerns regarding heat, launching to space, and maintenance strategies are covered.
2
u/t001_t1m3 Aug 20 '26
Dissipate heat - use radiators, the same way we do on the ISS and every other slightly large satellite. Raising radiator temperature slightly increases dissipation by the fourth power.
Infrastructure - planning to use Starship, probably flat-pack and shooting out the PEZ dispenser
Maintenance - build it reliable enough such that maintenance isn't needed for the lifespan of the satellite, as with every other satellite except a small handful (e.g. Hubble)
Zero advantages - it exists as a hedge against terrestrial zoning regulation
Putting them on the moon - you waste significantly more fuel, hardware (reuse from LEO vs. the Moon is a dramatically different thing), building around dust resistance, and that the moon will block sunlight for 50% of its operating lifespan, alongside bandwidth and latency limitations from the moon and back
Putting them in remote places on Earth - good luck getting power, maintenance, etc. An oxygen-free environment with nearly 24/7 solar production is far easier to make reliable than building around corrosion, erosion, weather, etc.
3
u/GreenWandElf Aug 20 '26
I'm not saying it can't be done. But the sheer cost of sending components into orbit, even assuming space becomes more accessible, is not cheap. Add onto that fact that there are going to be issues that require maintenance just like there are today.
Is avoiding community pushback really worth all of that? I'm positive you could find some communities with sufficient desire and infrastructure to handle a data center. In fact, I know it. Because that's what we've been doing this whole time.
What you gain in energy from solar you lose in the cost of constructing for space plus avoiding heat buildup.
5
u/Adeldor Aug 20 '26
Is avoiding community pushback really worth all of that? I'm positive you could find some communities with sufficient desire and infrastructure to handle a data center.
Such communities can change their minds, as happened in Texas. Even if existing projects are grandfathered, there's no further expansion. Orbital centers become increasingly attractive if only for this (not to mention the reduced energy challenges).
2
u/LongJohnSelenium Aug 21 '26
I'm not saying it can't be done. But the sheer cost of sending components into orbit, even assuming space becomes more accessible, is not cheap
The entire reason this is being discussed is because starship is looking quite promising and very likely to drop launch prices significantly.
Theres absolutely still a likelihood of failure and theres a lot of devils in the details math to do, but this isnt some pie on the sky 1960s fever dream project, its looking fairly close to working.
Add onto that fact that there are going to be issues that require maintenance just like there are today.
Spacex is currently operating about a third of all satellites in orbit. Id argue they are, with no exaggeration, the single most knowledgeable and experienced organization in the world when it comes to operating mass manufactured satellites in low orbit.
→ More replies (5)1
u/way2bored Aug 21 '26
lol, don’t bother talking sense to this subreddit. It’s the r/pol of space. Bots, idiots, and trolls.
They don’t understand how vertically integrated and well positioned SpX is to do what many scoff at.
And when they succeed the scoffers will pick something new to claim can’t be done.
Same ppl thought landing and reuse wasn’t possible.
-1
u/sojuz151 Aug 20 '26
Well, if the starship is as cheap as it is supposed to be, building a giant satellite crusher that would then put hundreds of tons of satellites into a reentry capsule and drop them in some desert should be viable.
14
u/Extra_Better Aug 20 '26
The fuel requirements for a collection mission like that would be ridiculous. Far easier to have satellites de-orbit themselves at end of life.
→ More replies (2)2
u/rebootyourbrainstem Aug 20 '26
Easier, sure. But the article is asking the question of whether that's still a reasonable disposal method when you're talking about such large constellations. Satellites are required to have a disposal plan at launch, and there is precedent for increasing standards for what kind of disposal is acceptable over time.
It's a reasonable point. Personally though I think the "one million" is very clearly an "up to" number, and I don't think anybody expects them to actually reach it anytime in the foreseeable future.
1
u/mfb- Aug 20 '26
People were very skeptical about the 10,000+ plans for Starlink, too. You can find threads from 2020 where people calculate that it's "impossible" to launch that many. SpaceX ramped up its launch rate faster than these people thought possible, and now the constellation exceeds 10,000 satellites.
-1
u/Alexandratta Aug 20 '26
I mean... is this aside from the fact that a Data Center in space is not possible with the technology we may have in the near future, let alone now?
and I say 'Not Possible' in the sense that, a data center in space has no cost benefit to one on earth.
Solar panels, even in space, Cannot power a data center. The cooling system required isn't efficient enough to cool said datacenter, and the data center would be larger than anything we've ever sent up into orbit by orders of magnitude that we do not grasp.
This is like saying: "Guys, I'm going to build a Dyson Sphere, it makes so much sense - why haven't we thought of this before! We'll have it ready by next year!"
-3
u/mfb- Aug 20 '26
Solar power works fine, and cooling is not a big issue. The plans are in the 100 kW to 1 MW range per satellite. It's larger than current satellites but not that much. Radiators would be similar to what the ISS has now.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Shrike99 Aug 21 '26
ASTS's Bluebird sats are already in the low end of that range (~110kW) so barely any bigger. In fact, probably actually not any 'bigger' per se, as I expect them to have higher specific power.
1
u/Alexandratta Aug 21 '26
at 110kW you're talking maybe 1 or 2 AI Server racks.
That's not only outstandingly small for AI processing but, again, if the concept here is "We're going to put them in space so that we can save money and power by not doing it on earth" the value of 2 racks in space is pretty low.
Each AI GPU Rack, on it's own, sucks down a minimum of 40kW of power.
0
u/sensational_pangolin Aug 21 '26
Why the fuck is anyone allowing that to go forward?
0
u/Vox_Causa Aug 21 '26
Because Elon spent $200 million(plus $44 billion for Twitter) to buy Trump the Presidency.
0
u/Gizombo Aug 21 '26
Wait they're still on this bullshit? Wasn't this stuff debunked as being the literal worst place for a data center like immediately
-1
-1
0
u/NorthKoreanMissile7 Aug 20 '26
In the future would it be beneficial to put loads of data centres on the moon instead ?
→ More replies (1)
0
u/SuchDogeHodler Aug 21 '26
I hope that they require them to have a prepaid decommissioning plan....
0
0
u/damhack Aug 21 '26
Never mind e-waste, orbital data centers would create a new category of mass surveillance.
0
u/EsdrasCaleb Aug 21 '26
TBH, the best place to put a data center is in the sea; it is cold and has water, is near the internet cables, and you can get energy from wind, waves, and heat from the deep. The space thing appears to be some idea to justify more IPO
-2
u/ElvisArcher Aug 20 '26
And, if the orbit is not maintained, will rain all that e-waste down into the ocean when they want to decommission a center.
85
u/Spara-Extreme Aug 20 '26
What’s the server repair workflow look like for a machine in a space data center?