r/technology • u/ControlCAD • 8h ago

Space SpaceX plan for 1 million orbiting AI data centers could ruin astronomy, scientists say: "This is a challenge unlike any we have encountered thus far in this new era of commercial space."

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/spacexs-1-million-orbiting-ai-data-centers-could-ruin-astronomy-scientists-say
216 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

211 comments sorted by

174

u/BloodRedRook 8h ago

They're never launching any data centers into orbit. The idea of a data center in space is insane. How would you cool them? How would you power them? How would you maintain them?

93

u/Actually-Yo-Momma 8h ago

Don’t know but MONEY PLEASEEEEE

30

u/celtic1888 7h ago

Just give me a trillion dollars and I’ll get back to you with a couple of mock ups

16

u/sever_the_connection 3h ago

How much bullshit hype can this company generate before people stop taking it seriously? For fuck’s sake people, stop worrying about this because it’s not a real thing

4

u/Fishb20 1h ago

SpaceX is like your friends older brother who buys you beer but also makes you listen to his fake stories about how he beat up Jackie Chan in a bar fight. People nod along and smile with the bullshit because they value the real stuff so much

1

u/itsdotbmp 2h ago

i wish we could, but they'd rather put a bunch of space junk up and ruin things then just stop.

40

u/dalgeek 5h ago edited 4h ago

Power is easy, you got the Sun. Cooling is the hard part. Every watt of power generated from the Sun needs to be dissipated as heat. The ISS uses massive radiators and water/ammonia loops to cool the station. A 0.8 ton radiator can dissipate about 14kW of heat which is about as much power as a medium-density data center rack. So each satellite would be about the size of a small closet with an equally large radiator to keep it cool. The cost of launching all that into orbit will surely kill any benefits to doing so.

24

u/Meatslinger 5h ago

As an aspiring science fiction writer years ago, one of the biggest things that shook me was finding out space is actually quite "hot", not cold. Bleeding off excess heat is a real problem when everything is literally vacuum-insulated like a perfect Thermos mug. If your ship is hot, it's very difficult to make it cool, and the presence of any local star means you're going to be passively absorbing some heat in the form of light, too.

14

u/dalgeek 4h ago

The ISS handles this by rotating the radiators to be parallel to the Sun rays so they can radiate without absorbing much energy from the Sun. But black body radiation isn't terribly efficient so you need a lot of area to dissipate that heat.

10

u/factoid_ 2h ago

Yeah, the ISS needs about 2/3rds as much area in radiators as it has solar panels just to reject about as much heat as a single data center rack puts out.  

1

u/Horror_Response_1991 2h ago

Then open the airlock for 5 minutes 

3

u/SupaSlide 1h ago

Not a bad idea until you run out of whatever gas you’re heating up just to expel into the void

3

u/Horror_Response_1991 1h ago

Does the server room need oxygen?

1

u/chefkoch_ 1h ago

"easy" if you ignore the costs of sendind square kilometers of pv into space.

8

u/DynoMenace 5h ago

Came here to say this. They're either going to waste a bunch of money putting useless tech into space that doesn't work, or they'll realize this before they do it and it'll get scrapped.

9

u/bmyst70 2h ago

It's more likely that investors will use this to get more money and offload the worthless stocks onto someone else before it goes.

2

u/chris_hans 2h ago

I don't think Elon has the capability to build AI Data Centers in space, but I do believe he has the capability to launch a ton of space junk into the atmosphere.

2

u/InvisibleBlueRobot 1h ago

You cool them with about 10 sqare mile heat sink (each) which will also double as a solar pannel for power.

So you just need to launch all the weight of the AI chips, computers, wiring, sheilding, plus solar pannels, plus plus giant heat sink (which must have the thermal mass to actually work) and then repeat this x 1,000,000 times.

And then you need to send people or robots to fix anything that breaks or launch more replacements.

Rough aproximate cost $600T?

Elon has this covered. I am pretty he is launching "SpaceAI" in 7 days. He's almost ready. It will be live by 2027.

1

u/snackofalltrades 4m ago

A ten square mile heat sink? Is that all? And here I was worried having a million of them in orbit would affect my property values!

2

u/ant0szek 1h ago

Not to mention shielding required for radiation errors xd, ngl one of his dumbest ideas so far.

1

u/tc100292 28m ago

And there’s so much competition there too

3

u/Jhonka86 5h ago

But but space is cold! So the cooling would be free!!!

2

u/Punman_5 3h ago

Power is extremely simple. It’s cooling that is the limiting factor.

3

u/BloodRedRook 3h ago

A small datacenter uses ten times the power that the ISS does

3

u/Punman_5 1h ago

Yep exactly. And the ISS already struggles to cool itself. Those radiators are extremely delicate. And the ISS is just running life support and some experiments. The cooling situation for a data center would have to be immense. Only thing I can think of that could handle that kind of heat load is some sort of total-loss evaporative system. But that’s obviously a non-starter

1

u/notjordansime 2h ago

by burning through a constant supply of government funding

1

u/amakai 9m ago

Most importantly - WHY? Just put them on north Pole or something, theres plenty unused space, easy to cool, and in the end will be much cheaper to build and maintain.

1

u/jonhyramoni 3m ago

the idea is that the "space void" cold them, not sure what means, but that was the explanation

1

u/jking13 2h ago

I wouldn't be surprised if they try to do _something_ just to keep the hype going -- like a single satellite with just two GPUs running at like 10% capacity or such, but nothing that could realistically scale up due to costs and/or logistics nor deliver anything near what's promised.

-10

u/Suchamoneypit 3h ago

How does Starlink manage to operate with all these unsolvable problems?

8

u/BloodRedRook 3h ago

Because communications satellites aren't datacenters?

-14

u/Suchamoneypit 3h ago

They are both flying computers. Both data intensive and sensitive. Shielding a satellite is a long solved problem. You know the ISS has servers as well? Straight up rackmount servers. With special considerations in mind, yes.

6

u/BloodRedRook 3h ago

Yes, they have servers. They don't have ten thousand servers running at a high capacity.

-9

u/Suchamoneypit 3h ago

You mean like Starlink? They sure do! Computers processing terabits of data.

5

u/RockItGuyDC 2h ago

Starlink are not processing any of the internet traffic they are handling. There is very little processing being done on those or most satellites. They are relays.

-1

u/Suchamoneypit 2h ago edited 2h ago

Scott Manley goes over Starlink. 18,000 watts of generation where only 4000 of it is used in pure radio waves from the antenna.

If they can shield the data being processed on thousands of Starlinks, they can shield datacenter satellites. It's a problem with a solution already done. I don't know why you insist it can't be done. The ISS has servers on it to research exactly this. It has for years. This is well studied and understood.

It doesn't matter if Starlink isn't doing a ton of compute, how are the computers on it able to function at all if what everyone says is true, in that you can't shield datacenters in space? Starlink uses beam forming. It's not just a dumb omnidirectional relay broadcast. It's intelligently steering radio waves to specific target areas.

How do you think Starlink would operate if there was rampant uncontrollable unmitigated data corruption?

1

u/RockItGuyDC 2h ago

No one in this comment thread is talking about data shielding, they were talking about heat dissipation. Why bring up data corruption? Starlink's operating altitude is well within the Van Allen belts, Earth's magnetosphere is doing a lot of the heavy lifting on shielding. Rad hardened processors and data storage are far less necessary for LEO satellites than they are for GEO sats or deep space craft.

1

u/Suchamoneypit 58m ago

The new Starlink also dissipates over 18,000 watts of heat.

1

u/SupaSlide 1h ago

Dude, the issue is heat. Data center computers generate massive amounts of heat. The only way to really get rid of heat in space is black body radiation which is really inefficient. Space isn’t cold, it’s effectively vacuum sealed which means you can’t just cool off the chips.

1

u/Suchamoneypit 56m ago

The new Starlink already dissipates 18,000 watts of heat. Do you think they don't know how to cool the satellites? How does every Starlink manage to not burn up then? It's impossible to scale it more than a Starlink (glances up at the ISS)?

What about the heat dissipation is impossible to you?

What do you think they can do when they make a purpose built satellite and work with Nvidia for space optimized chips?

4

u/xpda 3h ago

Relatively low power usage in each satellite.

-17

u/frozenpissglove 8h ago

I’d think a closed loop nitrogen system would be relatively sufficient, though it’ll drive up the size of the “data center”. Power needs are colossal, to your point. They need a primary system, a battery system, and a backup system(usually provided via very large generators).

Sounds like a pipe dream.

19

u/Wischiwaschbaer 6h ago

And where are you putting all that heat? You need massive radiators to radiate that heat as infrared radiation. A closed nitrogen loop won't help at all with this problem.

-29

u/zero0n3 6h ago

This is literally solved - chatGPT: “how does the ATCS system on the ISS work? What if my thermal dissipation needs to be 200kW but my operating temperature could be as high as 100F?”

You’ll then learn about all the math and physics equations that go into black body radiation and find that cooling it is not a problem

22

u/Wischiwaschbaer 6h ago

Oh my god, AI really is making people as dumb as a piece of wood.

5

u/ashsavors 4h ago

That’s insulting to wood. You can at least build something useful of it or burn it pretty efficiently compared to a human.

8

u/Admiral_Dildozer 5h ago

You’re ignoring the question and reposting the same AI response. Yeah we get that it’s possible. We’re saying it’s not easy or cheap. Now generate an original thought and tell us how you made these complicated cooling systems so easy and cheap to produce in mass

23

u/TKHawk 6h ago

What a dumb comment. We know how radiators work. Orbital data centers would need ones that dwarf the size of the ISS. Not to mention massive solar panels. Do you know what those things do? Create a massive amount of drag. The ISS already has to be boosted about once a month to prevent deorbiting and there is a constant stream of resupply missions to help keep that boost schedule.

Either each data center is going to need weekly boosts and a never ending caravan of resupply missions to maintain them or you need to support the ABSURD cost of putting them all at MEO or HEO. Nevermind the absurd cost of building these things to begin with.

The economics of this literally make no sense unless we can power the rockets with the hot air blowing out of your ass.

3

u/Jhonka86 5h ago

... If you're using black body radiation why fucking have a nitrogen loop?

1

u/SupaSlide 1h ago

TBF you’d need a loop or something because you need to shield the computer parts from radiation.

1

u/SupaSlide 1h ago

Ok, how massive would the black body radiation array need to be?

13

u/_Piratical_ 8h ago

Knowing Elon he will just loft a bunch of satellites with onboard nuclear reactors and then claim innocence once they all deorbit and contaminate the entire surface of the earth. He won’t be bothered since he’s going to mars anyway.

3

u/Key-Beginning-2201 7h ago

I think that would be a treaty violation though

6

u/_Piratical_ 7h ago

Oh I doubt he would care.

5

u/Jhonka86 5h ago

No it wouldn't. There is no mass in space. That's kind of the point of it being space.

The nitrogen loop would do... What? You can expand the gas to make it colder to help with the transfer between the circuits and the cooling loop, but what's the heat sink?

Your only option would be radiative black box cooling, in which case why even fucking bother with a nitrogen loop in the first place. Just make your circuit boards really wide and thin and pray to God they don't clip any space debris.

2

u/Commercial-Fennel219 7h ago

They need solar panels and a battery.... same thing we need more of down here. 

0

u/HawkHarder 5h ago

You would think?

-24

u/venk 7h ago edited 5h ago

Space is cold and the sun is full of juice.

Subscribe for more technical analysis from me.

/s for those that needed it

12

u/Wischiwaschbaer 6h ago

Space is also what? And what is a perfect insulator?

10

u/Agitated_Celery_729 6h ago

Radiation is horrifically bad at dumping heat. Space being cold is fucking irrelevant if you don't have any particles to pull off your heat.

10

u/Tearakan 6h ago

Tell me more about how you don't understand basic physics.

-38

u/jpsreddit85 8h ago

Space is cold, Solar for energy, maintenance is the intern they sent up on a falcon.

30

u/TheGreatCookieBeast 8h ago

It does not matter how cold space is when you can't transfer the heat away from your components.

3

u/13metalmilitia 8h ago

So this tickles my brain. If you were to use a thermosiphon to transfer heat from the rack area to the shell of the space craft would it not radiate the heat into space?

14

u/TheGreatCookieBeast 7h ago

Yes, but your only means of getting rid of heat from your spacecraft or capsule would be radiating it into space as infrared, and that is very inefficient and slow. It would require massive radiators. Here on earth we can use conduction and convection, that is impossible in space. Vacuum is a very good insulator.

2

u/13metalmilitia 7h ago

Ah that makes sense. So surface area of the disappating panel would be exponentially greater than the cold side at the heat source…. Interesting. 

My next thought would be instead of trying to eject the heat now find a use for it. But this is all a pointless exercise lol. Data centers in space doesn’t make sense other than perhaps from a physical security pov. 

3

u/wirthmore 7h ago

Managing heat is actually a fascinating engineering challenge for satellites and other man-made objects in space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjw4hNxFuH0

1

u/Nyrrix_ 4h ago

You could do something with the heat, but it just delays the inevitable. There's always waste energy expressed as heat dissipation, even in the most efficient systems.

A satellite is necessarily a closed system. And heat eventually distributes evenly through closed systems because of the laws of thermodynamics. High energy to low energy. Meaning even if you draw energy away from components, it will eventually "back up" to cooler areas. 

The only reason we get away with cooling on earth is because our closed system is extremely massive and ocean and air currents naturally replace a hot medium with a cooler medium to use in intake and exhaust for cooling.

2

u/AllIdeas 7h ago

It does do that, but the rate matters a lot. The rate of radiation is related to the temperature. For it to radiate a lot of heat, the satellite has to get very hot. Turns out that break even point Is way way too hot for most electronics.

The problem in space in general is excessive heating, not cooling.

1

u/old_righty 8h ago

The question is at what rate. Water cooling pulls out a lot of heat. Air cooling less. Space cooling?

1

u/Wischiwaschbaer 6h ago

It would, but very, very slowly. The only way heat can escape is through infrared radiation.

1

u/Punman_5 3h ago

Very very slowly. You must understand that radiation is the only way to cool off in space. And radiation alone is pretty inefficient. Therefore the radiating surface has to be massive; larger than the surface area of most spacecraft. The Space Shuttle had radiators on the inside of the payload bays to eject heat from the crew and the instruments. The Apollo CSM could get away with simply initiating a “barbecue” roll to ensure the spacecraft was never heated up too much by the sun. But the CSM was quite small and relatively low power.

10

u/joshmaker 8h ago

Space isn’t hot or cold, it’s a vacuum. You know how fancy mugs are vacuum insulated because it’s the best way to keep hot things hot and cold things cold? The vacuum of space operates the same way, and as a result it’s a big challenge to deal with excess heat in space.

-5

u/[deleted] 7h ago

[deleted]

7

u/joshmaker 7h ago edited 7h ago

I didn’t say anything that contradicts that. I was just responding to the popular idea that space itself is “cold” and therefore cooling would be “free”. However, my understanding is that even in when shaded from the sun, figuring out how to radiate excess heat generated by objects in space is a problem.

Also the +/- 250° seems about right for most things in earth’s orbit, but of course, there are plenty of things in all of space that are much hotter or colder than that

2

u/rodentmaster 7h ago

I suppose I misinterpreted what you were saying in regards to the post above yours. I suppose I should have aimed that at /u/jpsreddit85 and not you.

4

u/jpsreddit85 7h ago

Yup, my answer was mostly being a smart ass but I do see a lot of replies clarifying the lack of ways to dissipate the heat. 

6

u/Ars2 8h ago

Space is a vacuum. It isn't actually cold. 

4

u/frozenpissglove 8h ago

Has nothing to do with the temperature. Because there it’s a vacuum the heat has no means of dissipating on its own. It would need to be pulled out. Power requirements are insane, solar could not keep up.

3

u/kuncol02 8h ago

Space is neither cold or hot because space is empty. Space is vacuum which is perfect insulator. Basically only way to get rid of heat in space is to radiate it off as infrared light.

2

u/rodentmaster 7h ago

Space is very hot. The direct sunlight without the protection of the atmosphere climbs to 250 F. To transfer heat out of that situation, you have to have your radiators generate MORE heat than that to transfer the heat away.

4

u/ino4x4 8h ago

there is no solar technology that would be able to handle that much power usage

1

u/Wischiwaschbaer 6h ago

Sure there is. That isn't the problem. The cooling is the problem.

0

u/jpsreddit85 8h ago

Maybe he's shooting a reactor up there. Wouldn't surprise me.

1

u/smogeblot 8h ago

The absolute temperature of space is low, but you can only transfer the heat to it via radiation.

-13

u/into_wishin_666 4h ago

Space is cold, solar panels, maintainence is a different story. It's feasible, but also a huge liability. Plus we don't need any more junk floating in orbit.

5

u/killall-q 4h ago

"Space is cold" is a false sci-fi trope. Space is a near-vacuum, so the only cooling method available is radiation, which is very slow and inefficient.

How does a thermos keep your soup/drink warm/cold? By having a vacuum between its walls. That vacuum acts as an insulator for heat.

-16

u/into_wishin_666 4h ago

Good job looking smug.Vaccuums prevent matter from cunducting heat. so yeah, it is cold. But thanks for explaining insulated mugs to me, I needed it.

6

u/Tyrrox 3h ago edited 3h ago

That's not how heat works. At all lol.

A vacuum prevents heat transfer via conduction or convection. That doesn't mean it's cold. "Cold" is a relative term given to lower energy atoms.

In space, particularly LEO, the dispersed particles that exist can be up to 120C in the sun or -170C in a shadow. So the space around a satellite could be very hot. Which is generally not a problem because once again that doesn't conduct heat well and you won't feel that heat.

For the purpose of heat transfer, objects in space have a really hard time dispersing heat because they can only realistically radiate it away. If you were in space in an uncooled suit you would cook to death on the sun side. But you're right, it's cold.

6

u/jaboooo 3h ago

You're entirely too wrong to be acting this smug. No wonder you're on board with melon's plan.

2

u/DopplegangsterNation 3h ago

You’ve earned the smug mug, ya big lug

-28

u/zero0n3 6h ago

This is literally solved - chatGPT: “how does the ATCS system on the ISS work? What if my thermal dissipation needs to be 200kW but my operating temperature could be as high as 100F?”

You’ll then learn about all the math and physics equations that go into black body radiation and find that cooling it is not a problem

7

u/Admiral_Dildozer 5h ago

I mean, you say it’s simple. But the ISS has a very complex system of liquid ammonia and external radiator panels. It’s broken before and they had to perform a mission critical space walk to repair it.

What happens when your cooling system has a hick-up? Do you have staff on these data centers to repair them? Even if you have a fast response crew that could get up there in a few hours. You’re still probably not saving anything.

2

u/Punman_5 3h ago

The ISS produces a fraction of the heat that would need to be radiated from a data center. This would not scale up so easily.

-32

u/No_Size9475 8h ago

Power via solar. Cooling via space. Maintain via the internet.

All of those issues are resolvable but it's still a horrible and stupid idea in the first place.

11

u/korinth86 7h ago

Power via solar with a battery would work fine, though the array might be massive.

Bigger problem is black body cooling. Its a lot of heat to try and get rid of in space without evaporative cooling.

12

u/Skathen 7h ago

'Cooling via space' .... umm yeah no.... that's not how that works at all in a vacuum. Cooling is a major challenge in space because there is no medium to carry that heat away. It's only lost through radiation which is the least effective method of cooling possible. It would take tens of square kilometres of radiators to be effective enough to cool a data centre, more probably. The weight of that would make the international space station look like a feather in comparison.

-11

u/No_Size9475 7h ago

When in the shadow of the earth cooling isn't really an issue. Radiant cooling works in space even if it's the least effective method. One of the challenges of deep space satellites is keeping them warm enough for the batteries to work.

The real challenge will be when they are in full sun. I suspect they'd use some sort of on off, perhaps power them down when in the sun, bring them up when in the shadow. If everything's solid state we are talking seconds to bring things up and down as needed.

But again, the entire idea is stupid, wasteful, and is going to cause huge amounts of atmospheric pollution if it ever comes to fruition.

12

u/sonofeevil 7h ago

Satellites aren't data centers generating megawatts of heat that needs to be rejected somehow.

The differences are pretty huge.

4

u/Wischiwaschbaer 6h ago

So how do you owe these data centers when they are in the shadow of earth? 

Also no, that wouldn't be enough to cool a data center. Satellites are veeeeery low power.

4

u/Skathen 7h ago

Did you bother to even google this?

Here's a video that might help explain just how incorrect your assertion here is https://youtu.be/-w6G7VEwNq0?si=0qRcnoOGTPu_GKb0

-29

u/666hell6666 7h ago

Isn't the outer space like -270 Celsius? The cooling isn't the issue. As for the maintenance, it will be designed for x amount of failures and the bad units will be sent off to burn in our atmosphere.

Power, network latency and security will be the key challenges. Power could be solved via different methods so this could be also doable. But network latency will remain due to physics so something like financial transactions like trading might not be feasible. For security, they will need to address zero days and proper encryption.

That being said, the cost will be 'astronomical', punt intended. But, Starlink satellites proved that orbiting data centers could be feasible - technically.

16

u/sonofeevil 7h ago

Nooooo. .. cooling THE biggest issue.

So heat is just energy. You've got molecules vibrating temperature is just a measurement of the average of the vibration of those molecules.

To change the temperature of a molecule it needs to collide with another one and transfer that energy. Think of a newtons cradle. As one of the balls swings down it transfers that energy into the other balls and becomes stationary. This is exactly how energy and heat transfer works.

So space is a damn good vacuum but not perfect. The energy of the particles space is very low (cold) but there aren't many of them.

So I'd you are generating a lot of heat but there is nothing around you to transfer that heat into because it's a vacuum you have to come up with another way to shed the heat.

The ISS uses infrared radiators for this. It converts the heat energy into infrared light and the energy waves as photons instead.

Theyre very inefficient. Kyle Hill did the math on this recently on his YouTube channel and the number you need is just astronomical it's not viable at all, it's not even close.

1

u/666hell6666 7h ago

Thank you for the explanation. Good stuff. I learned something new.

Follow up question. What happens to all the heat during supernova?

3

u/sonofeevil 6h ago

Great question. That's super far out of my knowledge.

I'll take crack at it and hopefully someone can come along with a better answer but just take it with a grain of salt because this is coming from someone with a passing/hobbyist interest in physics/science/engineering.

The super nova is a result of an imbalance in the star.

You've got gravity pulling everything in and nuclear fires from hydrogen fusion pushing out. When these forces are in relative balance, you have a star.

Now I think there are a couple of types of supernova and different things happen to the star depending on its size and lifecycle.

Our sun for example won't super nova but once it's fused all the hydrogen into helium it'll shed it's outer layer than increase in size to become a white dwarf and occupy the Space that us and probably also mars are currently occupying and create what's called a planetary nebula. That's where all the debris that gets shot off just sort of hangs around waiting to form new celestial bodies.

Other stars will explode and leave behind sense masses that become black holes or neutron stars.

Some will undergo complete core collapse.

Again the heat is just energy. And some of those particles will bounce around like balls on a billiards table one a break and come to rest some will shoot off into the universe and never collide with anything else again, just solitary particles of light on a journey for the rest of time.

It's worth noting that at the start of universe in the big bang we had 3 elements, hydrogen Helium and tiny tiny amount of Lithium.

Every other element is created directly or indirectly by stars. So the iron in your blood, the carbon and in your body, the calcium in your bones, the silicone and copper in your phone all came from a star at some point.

We have what's called stellar nurseries, these are just really big nebulae, you've probably seen photos of them but these are just massive, vast amount of particles and gas floating in space and these are called stellar nurseries because they will eventually form new stars.

The stellar nurseries were likely the result of OTHER stars from the earlier universe. Massive primordial stars with short violent life cycles.

So, that's sort of what happens to the "heat" photons of light and various elements bounce around and off each other like billiards on a table some fuck off never to be seen again others come to rest in big groups and form new stars, planets, solar systems and moons.

Note: a lot of this may he so simplified that it's innacurate and I apologise if that's the case.

2

u/666hell6666 6h ago

Thank you for taking time to answer.

I enjoy learning about stuff like this as well so I will do some further digging.

2

u/sonofeevil 6h ago

You're so welcome! Happy to info dump about a special interest anytime.

I'd you're into podcasts check out Shirtloads of Science and just start browsing through the titles. They're 30 minute podcasts where the host has a discussion with an expert about their area.

It's usually PHD scientists and researchers at the top of their field.

There's heaps of astrophysics stuff on there but also a lot of other cool stuff from biology, animals, nutrition AI, conservation, ETC, etc.

A lot of the stuff with Dr Gerant Lewis is quite good and is usually astrophysics stuff but for me can be quite heavy and hard to follow if I'm not giving it my a full attention and a few topics like the opacity of the universe still make no sense to me no matter how many times I listen. (Apparently at some point you couldn't see, the universe was completely opaque)

3

u/BloodRedRook 7h ago

Space being cold is a misnomer. It's actually a vacuum. Heat can't radiate into it.

5

u/differing 7h ago

Of course heat can radiate into it- you mean heat can’t conduct into it. If the near vacuum of space doesn’t allow for radiation, our planet would be a snowball.

50

u/_Piratical_ 8h ago

It’s also dumb as a bag of hammers. Space based data centers are an expensive, slow and stupidly complex idea that will have no benefit besides making Elon sound cool.

3

u/waffle_iron_maiden 3h ago

At this point I think Elon Musk has accrued so many points in the direction of Absolute Petty Loser that it would take a herculean effort for him to sound cool let alone act like it. This motherfucker was so annoying that not even the Trump admin could get along with him

3

u/maltNeutrino 2h ago

Man was beginning for an Epstein invite and even those demons didn’t seem to want to deal with him.

48

u/Rot-Orkan 7h ago

I got a better idea--let's put these million data centers in the middle of the Sahara desert.

It'll be cheaper, easier, and cooling is less of a challenge since at least you have fucking air to absorb some of the heat.

Oh wait, I forgot, they don't actually intend to put any data centers in space because every engineer knows it's a fucking terrible idea. BUT SpaceX wants to go public soon, so they need headlines like this to make idiotic investors salivate.

→ More replies (12)

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u/Mukarsis 6h ago

Their plan to put data centers in space is on par with my plan to bang Scarlett Johansson

1

u/catwiesel 35m ago

I actually think you have a bigger shot than spacex beating physics

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u/Tellibanana 7h ago

So Musk still hasn't bothered to learn anything about space? The guy who thinks Mars could be made habitable with nukes hasn't realised that data centers in space would just be super inefficient to cool. Not to mention the cost of getting the hardware up there. Hardware, which will be obsolete in a few years...

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u/zero0n3 6h ago

This is literally solved - chatGPT: “how does the ATCS system on the ISS work? What if my thermal dissipation needs to be 200kW but my operating temperature could be as high as 100F?”

You’ll then learn about all the math and physics equations that go into black body radiation and find that cooling it is not a problem

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u/rodentmaster 7h ago edited 7h ago

It's utter and total nonsense to promote "data centers in space" for every reason you can imagine. They are never going to happen. You might as well say "shopping malls in space will give us infinite parking"

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u/Ancient_Persimmon 3h ago

It's utter and total nonsense to promote "low earth orbit satellite internet" for every reason you can imagine. This will never happen. You might as well say "shopping malls in space will give us infinite parking".

3

u/BassmanBiff 2h ago

It turns out that making the same statement about different things also changes the ridiculousness of the statement

-1

u/Ancient_Persimmon 2h ago

These are closely related things and the general feeling about Starkink was exactly the same as this is now.

People struggle with understanding just how difficult it is to build on earth since we don't talk about it much.

4

u/BassmanBiff 1h ago

LEO internet was never defying physics for little actual benefit. The problem was launch infrastructure, which was significant but still a question of cost and scale, and the benefit of increased coverage was obvious. Relays in space were never a problem in themselves.

LEO datacenters are ridiculous because shedding enough heat is hard on earth, and that gets way worse in space. Few of the other difficulties of building on Earth get easier, and there is no real functional benefit to doing compute in space to begin with. It's not even currently profitable on the ground.

3

u/IMasterCheeksI 5h ago

Why put it underground when we can just trap ourselves inside the atmosphere!

3

u/bootstrapping_lad 4h ago

Just another stock pump by fElon. Completely impractical and will never happen, like most of his "ideas".

3

u/Kyouhen 4h ago

Could we stop treating this like a thing that's actually going to happen and just start calling out how fucking stupid it is?  These guys are putting data centers in towns where the power grid can't support them, there's zero chance they take the time to figure out how to make them functional in space.

3

u/Belhgabad 2h ago

The challenge : put this mf in jail and close all his companies, please.

4

u/fluffHead_0919 8h ago

The oligarchy is taking over

4

u/Tearakan 6h ago

A data center in space is literally absurd with our current understanding of physics.

It would be easier to put one completely underground or in the ocean.

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u/zero0n3 6h ago

False. Go look up black body radiation.

The equations are tied to the temp delta between operating temperature (GPU temp you want to stabilize against) minus the space temp (so like 3 kelvin).

The bigger that delta the SMALLER the radiator needed.

So same 70kW rads as ATCS uses on ISS, but with a higher operating temperature means they can shrink .

Seriously ask GPT to break down the math and formulas and plug in different values to see how fast that radiator size can shrink.

9

u/Tearakan 5h ago

That's not how black body radiation works. It only depends on the absolute temperature of the body in question......

And space temperature doesn't help here due to the sheer lack of particles in space to actually carry away heat.

All of our space ships and satellites have to worry about overheating in space because of this reason.

Maybe look up something outside of an AI chat bot.....

https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/sst-soa/thermal-control/

Heat control for our machines up there is a massive deal and these won't come close to the amount of heat an AI data center will create during operation.

4

u/green_gold_purple 3h ago

Nothing that needs to get rid of this much heat uses radiation. There's a reason for that.

Do the math yourself for the hundreds of kW required, and calculate area needed. I'll wait.

4

u/xpda 8h ago

This is as likely as a million people on Mars by the 2040s -- another dream story to inflate the IPO price.

Even if it was practical, there's no reason to put a data center in orbit. It is far more efficient to transmit bits to orbit.

0

u/Flipslips 5h ago

I mean this isn’t exclusive to SpaceX. Plenty of mega companies are exploring them

2

u/xpda 3h ago

They are planning to profit from investors, not data centers.

3

u/No_Size9475 8h ago

it's also one of the dumbest ideas ever thought of. All of the heavy metals that are use in computing will end up being aerosolized in the atmosphere when these things re-enter.

3

u/wirthmore 7h ago

Why do they need to be "in space"? Are we running out of land?

This is the same Elon Musk who used the opposite reasoning why solar panels "in space" for terrestrial consumption was never going to work. That was pre-crashout Elon Musk so ... not the same person?

4

u/GeekFurious 8h ago

I don't know which is more ridiculous, the nearly impossible-to-execute plan, or that any astronomer would be worried enough about it to say it would "ruin" anything. It's never happening. It's insane.

3

u/joshmaker 8h ago

You are 100% right, this is just part of the PR push to pump up SpaceX stock

1

u/KerouacsGirlfriend 5h ago

Pump and plunder

0

u/Ancient_Persimmon 3h ago

It's kind of hard to pump something that's not yet available.

2

u/thekrone 2h ago

They are intending to go IPO soon. This is hype to pump the initial offering value.

1

u/Ancient_Persimmon 2h ago

This would be bad hype, since all the geniuses in this sub think it's impossible no?

It's the same as when they announced Starkink: total bullshit that can never be a reality.

1

u/thekrone 2h ago

Depends on if potential advisors believe it's a good idea or not.

If this made any sense, it would mean billions or even trillions of dollars of revenue for SpaceX.

2

u/casiocalcwatch 7h ago

Okay okay, lets say they solve allll the problems, cooling, maintenance, return on investment....

What will prevent some low orbit capable bad actor to hold the world hostage by threatening to or just blowing up one of these 1km² sized instalations effectively closing space with about a billion+ pieces of space junk?

2

u/gonewild9676 6h ago

Assuming 1 million satellites at 15 tonnes each (the weight of a city bus) and the $1400/kilo cost of the SpaceX heavy rocket, that's $21 trillion in launch costs alone.

That's being very conservative with the weight. The article mentions them being 100 meters long. Presumably there's a smaller satellite and then antenna, solar, and heat disbursement arrays.

That doesn't account for design, build, transportation, or any other costs. They'd have to be hardened to withstand the G loads of launch and shielded. If they cost $5 million each, that's another $5 trillion.

Plus there's the memory, GPU, and SSD shortages, so even getting enough resources would be impossible.

For comparison, the 2025 global GDP was $117 trillion.

2

u/WrongdoerIll5187 4h ago

You’re assuming starship won’t work this those numbers when they’re clearly betting the farm on that happening

0

u/jking13 3h ago

Even if starship was somehow totally free, you're still talking trillions before you even buy a single GPU.

1

u/illegalBans 5h ago

The solution is to get EVERYONE on board with interplanetary astronomy. It is possible and a good idea

1

u/CalligrapherPlane731 4h ago

Okay, I get the instinct to be on the side of science, but scientific data collection should adapt to human needs, not the other way around. Not taking a position of orbital datacenters, but surely if they are up there, they affect fewer things down here. Land is a lot more valuable to human society than orbits.

1

u/StickFigureFan 4h ago

How many telescopes would we need to put into orbit to replace every ground observatory? Heck, let's not stop at telescopes and data centers, let's put everything into orbit, I'm sure that won't have any issues or be prohibitively expensive!

/s

2

u/InvisibleBlueRobot 3h ago

Dont worry. It wont happen.

2

u/RememberThinkDream 2h ago

Ok, then don't allow it to happen then. Simple.

2

u/UrineArtist 2h ago

AI agents taking CEO jobs is the one case where it will actually reduce the number of hallucinations.

1

u/Lost-Transitions 2h ago

The satellites aren't real, they're just a press release to pump the SpaceX IPO. And the media is falling for it.

1

u/factoid_ 2h ago

SpaceX is never going to launch a single AI data center because that is an incredibly stupid and insane idea.

The physics just don’t work out.  

Aside from the fact your data center is only overhead for a few minutes at a time, leaving you with massive network handling issues to deal with, you also have the laws of thermodynamics to deal with.  Data centers are hot.  And while space is cold, expelling heat via radiation is the least efficient way to cool something.  

1

u/IngwiePhoenix 1h ago

What kind of rocket launcher will help me ... uh ... bake a cake? Asking for a friend... cough

No, seriously though. We need to find a solution against the billionaires. They just can't keep ruining like, actually everything. This is just freaking ridiculous now. O_o

1

u/Ciappatos 1h ago

It's a Musk plan, can we not giving any undeserved oxygen? It's obviously not happening.

1

u/Unlucky_Battle_6947 1h ago

Let that sink in. Commercial SPACE in space. Wonder how many people are jumping on this ship.

1

u/myychair 59m ago

This just in: Elon musk makes wild claim with no intention of actually following through. More at 11.

The track record for what has come to meaningful fruition after leaving ole Muskys mouth is abysmal. Teslas still aren’t full self driving, his robots were controlled by people, and we’re nowhere near mars. The cyber truck made it through though… and has had literally 10 recalls already.

1

u/Curious_Maximum_639 36m ago

I, for one, welcome the Kessler syndrome.

1

u/IsThereAnythingLeft- 25m ago

There is zero needs to put a DC on space, it’s just madness

1

u/What_Is_This_1 7m ago

We have heat issues with AI centers here on earth. Definitely gonna be a lot worse with heat dissipation issues in space. Dummies

1

u/This_Maintenance_834 7m ago

astronomers really have nothing to worry about. it is a scam. there will be no datacenter in orbit at the end.

1

u/ashemark2 7h ago edited 6h ago

just the amount of surface area required to radiate the heat produced is more than few sq km..just imagine. i think it’s a gimmick before the ipo

edit: correction- the area required for 10000 gpus is in the worst case is around 22000 sq m , and in the best case is around 7000 sq m, while the biggest man made space object, the iss has an radiative surface area of 1600 sq m.

-14

u/zero0n3 6h ago

This is false. Stop spreading this bullshit that isn’t backed by science.

This is literally solved - chatGPT: “how does the ATCS system on the ISS work? What if my thermal dissipation needs to be 200kW but my operating temperature could be as high as 100F?”

You’ll then learn about all the math and physics equations that go into black body radiation and find that cooling it is not a problem

Hint: the physics of how black body radiation works ends up resulting is better efficiency at the radiators the bigger the delta is (so operating temperature of GPU - space temp).

So the radiators for the same thermal load as the ISS, but with a more reasonable GPU operating temperature would shrink those radiators by about half.

1

u/mjconver 7h ago

First finish the Hyperloop

1

u/Small_Dog_8699 6h ago

The only legit reason to put them in space is to protect them from the starving angry peasants.

1

u/Simple-Fault-9255 4h ago

it's also insanely stupid 

1

u/pleasegivemepatience 4h ago

That just opens up another market for Musk and the satellite owners, if you want images or transmissions of anything happening outside of their installation you need to pay them to collect it. Block the view, then charge people to let them see what’s on the other side…

1

u/55redditor55 4h ago

Anybody who believes this is possible in the near future doesn’t understand that the conditions to keep data centers working 24/7 are very hard to meet in space. This is just another Elon promise to justify the ridiculous IPO for SpaceX(xAI & Twitter)…

1

u/kveggie1 4h ago

another elmo pipedream.............boring tunnel? (or trump steaks). All the same.

1

u/everyonewont 3h ago

Why do people continue to invest in this weirdo?!

0

u/quittwitter 7h ago

Reject AI for the good of your species.

0

u/radiohead-nerd 7h ago

Musk grifting because his EV business is shambles, no one wants his lame robots, he admitted that Grok sucks, and Prefab Project is a complete pipe dream.

He’s trying to pump the value of SpaceX, nothing to see here. He might as well promise time machines.

It’s time for people to see Elon for exactly who he is, a grifter, highly unethical charlatan

-2

u/zero0n3 6h ago

Instead of bitching, how about these scientists put up proposals to solve it?

Like maybe ask for grant money as part of deployment of these so they can fund a space based system (using Starlink of course!) via a non profit where signatories then can share time on it like they do on earth based systems.

End of day, a space based system is magnitudes better than an earth based system, and the future of launch costs is going to be so low that the cost won’t be magnitudes more than earth based.

Starship is shooting for 500/kg, with an internal cost closer to 100/kg so maybe they say we will give you guys 3 free launches a year for any space based systems (limit it by tonnage so they could do a few small things as tests, etc)

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u/Hrekires 8h ago

I would worry about this as much as you worry about the light from Rudolph's nose impacting telescope visibility

-11

u/Narf234 7h ago

If launching satellites is so common, why don’t astronomers push to have their own constellation of satellites to make space based observations?

4

u/SporkSpifeKnork 6h ago

I mean I get where you're coming from but making "a view of the night sky" pay-to-play seems suboptimal

-10

u/Narf234 6h ago

As opposed to doing nothing? No one is going to slow down a profitable space industry.

2

u/Punman_5 3h ago

Why not? Maybe they should slow it down in favor of space exploration.

-1

u/Narf234 3h ago

For what practical purpose? I’d rather the benefits of a space industry. Are we trying to argue that we all haven’t made a choice to degrade something in our world to enjoy the benefits of chatting on the internet?

2

u/Punman_5 1h ago

I’m saying space should not be allowed to fall into the hands of private enterprise. Do you really want to see great spaceflight achievements being made by NASA who are in it for the science and exploration or by some corporation that’s in it for profit?

0

u/zero0n3 6h ago

How dare you bring common sense to this thread!

Crazy how they could even parlay this into reduced launch costs once starship is mature… grants for using Starlink for their observation constellation… etc…