They’re a great idea if you happen to own a company making AI, a company making rockets, and a company controlling public opinion.
Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.
Submitted 2 weeks ago by lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea/
Comments
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
chunes@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I envision a future so shitty that people are willing to physically destroy data centers in self-defense. Putting them in space is a really good way to combat that.
skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Putting them in space also puts them technically outside of the legal jurisdiction of any country. I figure fElon probably assumes that means said servers can never be subpoenaed.
chaogomu@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Putting data centers in space is a good way to keep people from destroying them. Thermodynamics on the other hand, will have a field day with them.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Keep people from destroying data centers by having them destroy themselves? Is this some sort of zen koan?
Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Have to destroy the rockets that are used to maintain them then and just wait.
TheSeveralJourneysOfReemus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
S o l a r. F l a r e
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Also the whole being a vacuum thing makes heat dissipation much more difficult.
totesmygoat@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
And an excellent way to scam a little. And fleece the flock
Ulvain@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
That’s an insightful way of putting it, 10 points.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 2 weeks ago
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.
Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
For anyone who doesn’t know, this is because space is an absolutely terrible place to put computers. Getting power is actually the easiest problem to solve, and is still really hard, because building any kind of infrastructure in space is hard. Then you’ve got all that radiation you have to shield against because you’re no longer protected by the Earth’s atmosphere, and worst of all you’ve got the cooling problem because Jesus fucking Christ, space is not cold!
This is why I get annoyed every time a scifi movie shows people freezing to death in space. Because it leads to this level of mass delusion and then suddenly it matters and everyone just unquestioningly believes the lie that space is cold. Space is a vacuum. A vacuum is what your Contigo travel mug uses to keep your coffee scalding hot after four hours. If vacuums are that good at keeping something hot when it naturally wants to get colder, think about what they’ll do to something that is actively generating heat. All of your components are going to cook.
There are proposals to put data centres at the bottom of the ocean that are substantially more credible than this idiocy.
KenOh@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
I’m always annoyed that people don’t get that space isn’t cold or hot, since heat is a property of matter, and that’s exactly what a vacuum doesn’t have. Your travel mug example is great. I’m going to start using it.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 2 weeks ago
Maybe we should put datacenters on Mars, to warm it up.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Tell me if I’m wrong, but with the shielding they have on the ISS doesn’t it have issues that consumer grade computers they use last a few months due to various radiation and heat that they die? So an AI data center is going to be insane to protect long enough to make its components useful.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
seems the bottom of ocean equally stupid. in space you would have to deal with comsic/solar radiation damaging a satellite-type data center, and then you need solar cells/nuclear power, space debris is another problem.
a bottom of the ocean you would have to deal with the enormous pressures, even at several hundred feet down, corrosion, critters living or clogging up the 'buildings, silt.
bufalo1973@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I don’t know if it would work but… Could an infrared laser expel enough heat?
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Oh, then the dipshit is definitely going to try it.
Avicenna@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
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
AA5B@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I also wonder if this is an entire red herring. There are increasing reasons for more compute in space, such as to pre-filter sensor data.
Is it to naive/optimistic to think no one is actually looking for a space datacenter to compute terrestrial loads, but they recognize the need for processing space loads?
architect@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
See now you all are thinking.
The rich wouldn’t tell us this shit if it wasn’t going to be used as some spin/distraction whatever it is.
kossa@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
It’s a legal thing. No (real) jurisdiction. In space nobody will shut down Grok generating kiddo porn. It’s basically the precursor for Epstein Island 2.0.
brownsugga@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Don’t data-centers require massive cooling?
ramenshaman@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yes, and it’s easier to cool things on earth. In space, there’s no air to help you cool thinks off, you can only reject heat through radiation. Most spacecraft are carefully designed to reflect heat/light on surfaces facing the sun and refect heat into empty space from surfaces that are shaded.
AA5B@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In space there’s no epa
draco_aeneus@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
What if you build it on an asteroid or moon or planet. Uranus is ~-225⁰C, right?
Ftumch@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
There’s another problem that nobody mentions. Putting thousands of additional satellites into space would seriously increase the risk of Kessler Syndrome occurring.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This isn’t true for low orbit items. They will come down on their own in ~5 years.
At the absolute worst case scenario, we’d be blocked or ~5 years. R
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Collisions in LEO can chuck debris into orbits which intersect higher orbits. If one of those collides with something in in said higher orbits, you have a problem.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
At this point I feel we’d just be immunising the rest of the universe from human stupidity.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Little bit of a nitpick but Kessler syndrome doesn’t care about how many satellites you have, and more about how many dead satellites you have hanging around on random orbits. You could put hundreds of millions of satellites in space as long as you had some sort of decommissioned program. You can always send up rockets if you can just move the satellites out of the way / know where they are.
Ftumch@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Dead satellites do add a much larger risk than satellites that can be steered, sure. If we stopped steering all our satellites right now, I believe it’d only take a few days before a collision occurred.
However, every satellite in orbit adds to the risk, especially if a chain reaction starts happening and it becomes very hard to avoid the shrapnel flying around. Or if a once-in-a-century-type solar flare takes out a bunch of satellites.
mechoman444@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
Avicenna@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
The whole point is that it is cool so that it can be hyped up like AGI and then sold.
benny@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
You mean more socialism for the already rich.
jj4211@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
To add to your point about logistical nightmare, Microsoft tried an underwater datacenter. Even right there, just a little bit underwater was absolutely not worth it.
Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
Really? I would have figured the Rapture route would be workable with the right engineering. Especially given the massive amounts of borderline free cooling and non-existing regulatory environment if outside territorial waters.
prenatal_confusion@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Servers get replaced that often because they are using too much energy for too little computing power compared to newer generations. If the module is already up there and functioning and energy is free then it’s a whole different thing.
Defects are another topic.
And the whole thing is obviously crazy for a whole lot of other reasons.
jj4211@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Ridiculous, you can’t have cloud computing in space, there’s no atmosphere!
Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Of course they are, same with undersea data centers (for different reasons).
But it doesn’t matter. In the late-stage capitalism we find ourselves in, you don’t need a real product, nor a promising prototype. You don’t even need a good idea, you just need the promise that you’ll come up with a good idea soon. That’s enough to get the investors drooling, the shareholders hyped, and the gullible idiots engaged.
And you only have to maintain that long enough to pay yourself and your insiders some fat checks. Then when inevitably, reality barges in and people start to realize it was all bullshit and pipe dreams, you’ve already cashed out, and if you’re PR team is good, the media and your sycophantic fans will praise you as a visionary who was simply, “ahead of their time.” And you can go on to scam more people.
It’s basically Patreon scams but with billions of dollars.
Murdoc@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Interesting. So the “post-truth era” isn’t just for the masses, but the rich as well, as they cannibalise each other.
maplesaga@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Late stage capitalism just means late stage fiat doesn’t it, since all the money flooding in is debt and QE?
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You can have late stage capitalism with any monetary system. Though relying on inherent value tends to leave poor people in much worse conditions much more quickly.
Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Everything you described falls under the umbrella of Capitalism.
Capitalism will always result in this sort of devolution, because it rewards this sort of behavior.
Constant GDP growth fuels capitalist enterprises because valuations go up and Capital is expanded. That incentivizes governments to make access to Capital easier and regulations on growth looser, which the firms themselves favor in terms of lower taxes, cheaper loans, larger capital markets, etc.
How many business leaders lobby, vote, and push for higher general taxes, stronger labor rights, stricter regulations, and more expensive loans?
The only time you’ll see them doing any of those things, is when it directly hurts one of their major competitors.
This makes perfect sense within a Capitalist framework, because private ownership of the means of production and increasing profitability are literally the core of Capitalism. So of course Capitalists will always tend towards what makes the most money.
All the worst traits of modern Capitalism, (Everything is a subscription, planned obsolescence, shrinkflation, extreme litigiousness over patents and copyrights, ads in everything, predatory pricing & monetization) are the logical result of a Capitalist system.
iampivot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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
TheFinn@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Whatever company owns it will be responsible for it. That company will answer to whoever it needs to here on earth.
mad_djinn@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
you think us sub-millionaires have any power in government, huh?
REDACTED@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Imagine spending 10 years to build a server in space to avoid some law and next month government changes the law
quips@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Now that is actually smart
hansolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
This is 1 million% what’s at play here. Tech bros HATE that they have to deal with stupid laws, and putting a server outside of the jurisdiction of literally every country is a dream. A giant server ship has to dock, it needs fuel…not so with something in orbit (in Elon fantasy land anyway)
Krunchiebro@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The real issue with space-based data centers isn’t just whether they’re a “bad idea” from an engineering perspective; it’s that they represent the ultimate transition toward a vertically integrated, unregulated monopoly. While everyone is focused on the technical hurdles, we need to look at who actually benefits from this shift. For someone like Elon Musk, this isn’t just a project—it’s a way to own the entire global internet stack. Because he owns the “truck” (SpaceX) and the “road” (Starlink), he can launch and link these data centers essentially for free. This creates a market that is so tightly locked into one ecosystem that it can never be challenged by a terrestrial competitor.
From a purely operational standpoint, space turns every earthly liability into a superpower. Data centers on the ground are a nightmare of land taxes, massive water consumption for cooling, and constant strain on local power grids. In orbit, those costs vanish. Heat is radiated into the vacuum for free, and solar power is available 24/7 without weather or night cycles getting in the way. Even the physical security is inherently top-notch because the hardware is literally unreachable. When you combine that with a mesh network like Starlink, the need for laying fiber lines disappears entirely. The user just needs an antenna, and the “gatekeeper” handles everything else in the sky.
The terrifying downside is that this creates a jurisdictional black hole. If a server is orbiting 500km above the Earth, whose laws actually apply to the data stored on it? We’re talking about a “gated community” where the ownership, pricing, surveillance policies, and privacy standards are all controlled by a single entity with zero competition or government oversight.
Once we stop building ground infrastructure and rely solely on the “space cloud,” we lose all leverage. It’s an engineering miracle for the person who owns it, but it’s a democratic nightmare for the rest of us. It’s not just a bad idea; it’s the construction of a digital kingdom that sits physically and legally beyond our reach.
0x0@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Heat is radiated into the vacuum for free,
Is it though?
TORFdot0@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Granted I never made it further than freshman level physics in college but doesn’t heat needs a media to radiate away. Otherwise it just stays in place? So there would be nothing to move the heat away from installation? The ISS uses these big radiators the emit the waste heat as infrared light. That seems like a plausible method to exhaust waste heat. But I don’t have any clue if that can scale up to the level of a huge data center compared to the systems on the ISS
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Heat is radiated into the vacuum for fre
When you combine that with a mesh network like Starlink, the need for laying fiber lines disappears entirely
Citation needed.
And on water usage, I will point out that gas generators and evaporative cooling are only used because other methods (geothermal, big radiators, heatpumps) are somewhat more expensive.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We already radiate heat away just fine in space, it’s just a matter of how much space do you need to use to do it and all the implications of what that would mean for any given satellite. I wouldn’t call it free, because you need the hardware to do it and the extra weight reduces the payload capacity of whatever you’re sending up, but we can do it.
Starlink also uses laser links to talk to each other which these satellites would also use. So you go up from land, bounce around with lasers in space until you’re close to your ground station, then come back to earth and route to your home.
Fiber is still the better option on land if you can get it there, but there are a lot of places it’s never going to get laid.
Krunchiebro@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thoughts?
tedach@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Pardon my potential ignorance, but I’m under the assumption that radiating heat in vacuum is NOT easy. Normally, heat escapes from sources into the surrounding atmosphere, whereas in space, only radiant heat (IR?) can bleed off into vacuum. The conductive heat from, say, a cycling loop of water still needs a radiator that vents into surrounding volume. Without atmosphere, radiators can’t conduct efficiently, right?
Please set me straight if possible.
rimu@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
These are my thoughts https://distantprovince.by/posts/its-rude-to-show-ai-output-to-people/
MissesAutumnRains@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I’m no expert, but I feel like a data center in space is a super niche use case. Bandwidth seems like it would be a major issue. Heat seems like it would as well. And as you said, jurisdiction would be a problem that many businesses wouldn’t necessarily want to contend with.
While the devices are difficult to get to physically, should an adversarial state actor send something up, it’s not like we could stop them from accessing the devices in a way we could if they were within the borders of a country. They’re harder to reach for smaller adversaries, and significantly easier for bigger ones. Not to mention significantly harder for us to repair if something goes wrong.
I’m not saying data centers in space are a bad idea in general, but I am not seeing a huge benefit to them right now.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I said so long ago. Flying masses of stuff into orbit, keeping it alive in a relative high radiation environment, cooling issues (there is no local river you can conveniently turn into steam), the list is long. Getting free power from large solar panels does not make up for it.
Prior_Industry@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Mr Musk has to justify that 1.75t valuation somehow
FanciestPants@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Naive question, but would bit-flip also be a problem without the atmosphere to shield (some) radiation?
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It doesn’t matter.
It’s a fantasy in these billionaire’s heads, a meme, and no one is telling them no. So they’re going to fund it, whether it makes any sense or not.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Before even considering radiation damage, hopium $200/kg launch costs mean 15c/kwh electricity. The you add the cost of specialized panels and radiation emitters. At least 20x that of earthly systems.
Reygle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Considering the ludicrous price to put each pound of equipment into orbit, I’d like to invite them to send as much hardware as they can in to (high) geostationary orbit so they can find out how well a vacuum does NOT promote radiating heat
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
The thing is spacex’s whole falcon 9 architecture needs something to do. They very quickly cleared the backlog of satellites waiting to launch and now they’re waiting for space start ups to materialize and want to launch things into space. The majority of falcon 9 launches now only launch starlink. It’ll get even worse if they can make starship work, they’ll have a huge capacity with nothing to put in it. Ai data centers in space are an attempt at justifying the entire concept of starship or at the very least employ the falcon 9 team.
This and spacex going public tell me the return on investment of a space based internet provider maybe isn’t profitable enough to fund a rocket development program. Their big cash cow, being the ISS taxi, is winding down and now they’re looking for suckers with money.
Mihies@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
No, this is fake news. I bet on Elon, he knows more than anybody on Earth, he already put men on Mars and created Hyperloop.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Dumping heat in space is actually hard to do. You’d need huge radiators for radiative emission cooling.
kinther@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
As someone who designs and builds networks as a profession, I don’t see this being a great idea. Maybe I just don’t have all the facts.
I am leaning heavily on the example of M$ trying an underwater datacenter, which they decommissioned and have not pursued further. Put a node of compute somewhere and eventually it will become obsolete or unusable due to hardware failure. Not to mention the energy requirements and cooling needed in space. Waste heat does not just dissipate unless it has a heat sink, which adds more volume and mass to the payload!
toofpic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Was the title written by Trump?
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Maybe for a space based population a data center in space would work. This is just taking off site hosting too far.
drspectr@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Well its a great ideal if you happen to be a company with a space program.
jacksilver@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I feel like on part no one ever mentions on things like this are, how do you enforce any jurisdiction on a satellite and what it’s doing.
The main crazy thing about a satellite data enter is you can’t confiscate it and therefore you can’t control it. Hell once it’s up there the only thing any government might be able to do is find the owner and force them to crash it (if possible).
It in a sense sounds a bit like the wild west of the original internet. Admittedly Musk being at the forefront of it all sounds terrible, but I think there is something fascinating about an information hub that could be completely independent of any country.
outerspace@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to out it underground?
reksas@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
only way it will be worth putting anything in space is by having a spaceport in there first and some reliable way to haul stuff from ground to it. At least way i see it, at the moment its like building a complex facility on an undiscovered continent with no support.
Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Shame you can’t do some sort of thermoelectric power generation thingie with all the heat from these data centres.
Zos_Kia@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
Interestingly NASA had an idea of a plan that sounds at least technically possible, but it’s a multi-decade operation and doesn’t look anything like what the current startups are pitching. Of course you can have your data centers in space, why the fuck not, but a data center sits on top of a lot of boring old infrastructure which nobody’s excited to talk about.
It’s going to be prohibitive if you have to pay the gravity tax every time you want to move 1 ton of metal, so realistically this kind of high-tech project cannot even begin without having substantially industrialized the moon. Nothing fancy but you’ll need at least some mining and refining, and solid trans-lunar logistics routes. Probably some housing for a bit of personnel too. At that point the space data center would be dwarfed by the size of its own support system.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
LOL don’t worry, like all the Space Nutter fantasies from the 1950s onwards, they are wildly impractical and will never, ever happen.
lordnikon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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?
EndOfLine@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The problems; plural; is that the person who popularized the idea of data centers in space has little to zero understanding of any of the space sciences and yet owns and directs one of the world’s largest, and privately owned, aerospace companies with massive government contracts that splits its time with their own AI work.
fallaciousBasis@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We already have data centers in space.
Jack_Burton@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Have you never seen a movie set in space? Evrytime someone gets sucked into space they freeze. You saying every movie got it wrong?? Space is cold. Duh.
credo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Easy, just create a long heat sink and dangle it in the earth’s atmosphere. Now we are winning!
0x0@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
From that to a space elevator…
Fermion@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
With radiators just like with every existing satellite system.
youtu.be/DCto6UkBJoI&t=12m57s
Very large scale datacenters would likely have some nasty fluid handling problems to solve.
Devial@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
Have you seen the size of the radiators on the ISS ? And that’s just what needed for cooling of body heat for 9 people and basic computer and support equipment.
A data center that is actively pumping out massive amounts of heat would need humongous radiator panels.
lordnikon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah the amount of heat a data center vs a satellite your going to super heat the space in that orbit over time. It they are geostationary then its even harder as the the data center doesn’t move away from the heat.
fallaciousBasis@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A radiator. Next question?
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
What’s going to be performing convection to dissipate heat from the radiator in a manner to support the heat generated by an AI data center?
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Raditors. Starlink v3 can in theory already shed 20Kw of heat. But they would need to figure out how to 5x that and keep things profitable.
wewbull@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
It would be 20kW for each rack or two. The types of data centre deal they talk about these days are measured in GW of compute. That’s 50,000x just for 1GW.
fallaciousBasis@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
How would you power them?
The surface area of solar panels exceeds the surface area needed for radiators to cool everything.
In space I would imagine you’d find the perfect sandwich ratio. One bun solar, one bun radiators, the meat being the racks.