5 ms·

Orbital Data Centers: Why the Hype Outpaces Reality

27 points by rbanffy 4mo ago

NishanStepak 4mo ago
The advantage is solar power in space. They will never stop getting sunlight.
- root-parent 4mo ago
  https://youtu.be/-w6G7VEwNq0?t=340 https://youtu.be/-w6G7VEwNq0?t=340
  - NishanStepak 4mo ago
    This has little to do with rationality. It is the classic Move And Fast Break Things combined with the off base idea of building a Kardashev scale civilization. This part of Elon Musk's philosophy as well as many of the tech bros who believe in Abundance. https://x.com/teslaownersSV/status/2068178062030803390 https://x.com/teslaownersSV/status/2068178062030803390
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- rbanffy 4mo ago
  In LEO you are about 50% of the time in the shadow of the Earth. Higher orbits or solar orbit (where you can get uninterrupted sunlight) require a lot more fuel and the further out the data center is, the higher the latency.
- joloooo 4mo ago
  There's a very narrow band of sun-synchronous orbit with consistent enough sunlight to make orbital data centers viable. Even with a tight constellation of 500,000 to 1,000,000 satellites packed into that band, it still doesn't make economic sense compared to what terrestrial data centers can do. At 500,000 satellites you're looking at maybe 50 GW of solar power. Then factor in the lifespan of LEO at ~5 years you're looking at hundreds of satellite launches daily to maintain that infrastructure. Now work is being done for increasing solar access (Starcatcher) and others are working on improving LEO refueling and repair capabilities, but I would say we're decade+ away from establishing any true compute infrastructure in orbit.
  - hackeraccount 4mo ago
    decade+ is not really that long, is it? Say you're correct in that time frame. If you put money in now to a venture that seems uncertain then in 5 years it's going to seem much less uncertain - and so the investment will be worth that much more. I think there's an oft repeated view that markets only look to the next quarter. That's not really true. Markets (or people) are willing to go in on long term investments as long as they believe they understand the uncertainty. Which leads to crazy 2nd and 3rd order speculation (I think you think that they think...) Personally putting money into space based datacenters seems crazy to me currently but in a couple of years it'll be more clear as to just how crazy this is. At which point the opportunity (and risk) will be gone one way or the other.
    - joloooo 4mo ago
      You're right on that perspective. I should clarify. I mean decades+ when compute and power begins to realistically make sense where we can start planning such a long term strategy. I personally think our cislunar / moonbase efforts are a better effort to put energy and resources into.
- wpm 4mo ago
  Solar and batteries get you through the entire day right here on Earth, plus you can shit in a toilet when you need to go on site to fix or upgrade something, not in a little tube. Plus you can probably just drive there instead of needing 15,000 feet/sec delta-v to get to orbit. And you can breathe. Surely the cost of batteries and panels do not exceed the costs and logistical pain-in-the-dick going into orbit will impose.
- NishanStepak 4mo ago
  [dead]
- NishanStepak 4mo ago
  There is a 150 KW Solar Array on Space X's first Data Center In Space It was launched in June of 2026. Technology improves at a steady pace. Space solar power is new and will improve over time because it is not a mature technology. Also, in space solar power is continuous and receives more energy than on the ground. https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/article/spacex-reveals-its-first-orbital-data-center-much-simpler-than-a-starlink-satellite-musk-says-141110185.html https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/article/spacex-...
root-parent 4mo ago
Data Centers in Space are a practical engineering impossibility, as well as making no economic sense. Engineering and the laws of physics get on the way. Just because Scott Manley refuses to call that out, so he can do another eight videos about it, don´t stop listening to somebody with the feet on the ground: "Orbital Data Centers: Spacecraft Constraints and Economic Viability" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27197 https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27197 "Hot AI in Cold Space: Thermal-Crosstalk-Aware Scheduling for Sustainable Orbital AI Clusters" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.26150 https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.26150 "Above the Cloud: Building Data Centers in Space - Richard Campbell - NDC Copenhagen 2026" - https://youtu.be/eo7MEPgWGic https://youtu.be/eo7MEPgWGic "Space Data Centers Are Dumb" - https://youtu.be/-w6G7VEwNq0 https://youtu.be/-w6G7VEwNq0
- nancyminusone 4mo ago
  I don't think they are impossible, just impractically expensive. That should be no problem for AI companies and their infinite access to capital. Nobody wants datacenters to be built around here on the ground, so I say get to spending. If it ends up bankrupting them, even better.
  - Reddit_MLP2 4mo ago
    the way the crony capitalism economy works, it will bankrupt all of us well before it does the AI companies...
- aeternum 4mo ago
  Good thing Elon's companies have a history of moving engineering impossibilities from impossible to slightly late. Remember when globally competitive electric cars, re-usable boosters, catching a rocket with chopsticks, playing a fps game via a brain implant, and maintaining a satellite constellation at 480km LEO were also impossible?
  - CuriouslyC 4mo ago
    There's a difference between "infeasible given materials and manufacturing capabilities of the time" and "infeasible as a scalable solution due to the laws of physics"
fnord77 4mo ago
I think everyone misses the real point - they're completely outside the jurisdiction of any government. Short of launching an ASAT and the risk of space debris, nobody will be able to shut them down.
- advisedwang 4mo ago
  What are they going to do in these orbiting datacenters that would be getting them shut down on earth?
  - fnord77 4mo ago
    crypto scams, selling CSAM
- hackeraccount 4mo ago
  I don't think sovereignty works that way.
- Ekaros 4mo ago
  On other hand anyone using them for anything is certainly under some jurisdiction. Just because no one can get there physically. Does not mean people who use them are out of reach.
- dialogbox 4mo ago
  > nobody will be able to shut them down. ASAT can completely destroy it very easily. Then isn't that everyone who can send orbital object can shut them down?
  - fnord77 4mo ago
    The only countries that can shoot down a satellite are United States, Russia, China, and India. Is the US going to launch a multimillion dollar multistage aegis missile to blow up a server that is serving illegal gambling?
ck2 4mo ago
have you ever seen a detailed photo of the ISS? * https://images2.imgbox.com/64/4b/GhtUtq1m_o.jpg https://images2.imgbox.com/64/4b/GhtUtq1m_o.jpg look at how massive the solar panels and more importantly the thermal radiators are outside compare to the size of the human habitat tubes "AI" in space would demand as much if not even more for each node
- advisedwang 4mo ago
  The hotter you are, the less radiators you need for the same heat dissipation. The ISS needs to run at human-comfort temperatures, but a datacenter can run much hotter than that (note the "at 60 °C" in the article). I forget the scaling parameter, but it's like T^2 or T^4 or something like that, so running hotter makes a huge difference. Of course, that's offset by the enormous heat output of a datacenter. I'm not saying it's viable, just that you actually need to do the math instead of eyeballing the ISS radiators.
  - ck2 4mo ago
    I am curious to see if this causes an improvement in radiators though, that would be interesting or perhaps a whole new technology invented to vent the heat will be interesting to see what they come up with hmm, how do they radiate the heat from the capsule with humans going to the moon, now I am really curious, I've never seen panels like that on the lunar module past or future
    - advisedwang 4mo ago
      > how do they radiate the heat from the capsule with humans going to the moon https://blogs.esa.int/orion/2018/01/18/keeping-cool-while-staying-warm/ https://blogs.esa.int/orion/2018/01/18/keeping-cool-while-st... https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/a51a54b9-9700-4724-a3ce-87f0e7f654d8/content https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/a51a54b9-9... Looks like the regular exterior of the service module provides enough area for heat exchange.
throw310822 4mo ago
Rather than reasoning on the feasibility of data centers in space, what are the constraints that prevent them from being built on Earth? What's the minimum cost of building and operating in the US the equivalent of a 1M satellites data center?
- xnx 4mo ago
  The last straw their grasping at is "regulations" are to unfavorable on the ground so space makes sense. People repeat this as though there weren't still a dozen better options than space.
selivanovp 4mo ago
My bet is that all of this "Data centers in space" media campaign is just a cover for testing and launching military stations with an ability to attack ICBM's and ground targets all over the globe.
jaybrendansmith 4mo ago
I am waiting to reserve my place in Elysium. "Get your ticket to that wheel in space while there's time ... The fix is in ... You'll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky"

27 points by rbanffy 4mo ago

NishanStepak 4mo ago

The advantage is solar power in space. They will never stop getting sunlight.

root-parent 4mo ago
https://youtu.be/-w6G7VEwNq0?t=340 https://youtu.be/-w6G7VEwNq0?t=340
- NishanStepak 4mo ago
  This has little to do with rationality. It is the classic Move And Fast Break Things combined with the off base idea of building a Kardashev scale civilization. This part of Elon Musk's philosophy as well as many of the tech bros who believe in Abundance. https://x.com/teslaownersSV/status/2068178062030803390 https://x.com/teslaownersSV/status/2068178062030803390
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
rbanffy 4mo ago
In LEO you are about 50% of the time in the shadow of the Earth. Higher orbits or solar orbit (where you can get uninterrupted sunlight) require a lot more fuel and the further out the data center is, the higher the latency.
joloooo 4mo ago
There's a very narrow band of sun-synchronous orbit with consistent enough sunlight to make orbital data centers viable. Even with a tight constellation of 500,000 to 1,000,000 satellites packed into that band, it still doesn't make economic sense compared to what terrestrial data centers can do. At 500,000 satellites you're looking at maybe 50 GW of solar power. Then factor in the lifespan of LEO at ~5 years you're looking at hundreds of satellite launches daily to maintain that infrastructure. Now work is being done for increasing solar access (Starcatcher) and others are working on improving LEO refueling and repair capabilities, but I would say we're decade+ away from establishing any true compute infrastructure in orbit.
- hackeraccount 4mo ago
  decade+ is not really that long, is it? Say you're correct in that time frame. If you put money in now to a venture that seems uncertain then in 5 years it's going to seem much less uncertain - and so the investment will be worth that much more. I think there's an oft repeated view that markets only look to the next quarter. That's not really true. Markets (or people) are willing to go in on long term investments as long as they believe they understand the uncertainty. Which leads to crazy 2nd and 3rd order speculation (I think you think that they think...) Personally putting money into space based datacenters seems crazy to me currently but in a couple of years it'll be more clear as to just how crazy this is. At which point the opportunity (and risk) will be gone one way or the other.
  - joloooo 4mo ago
    You're right on that perspective. I should clarify. I mean decades+ when compute and power begins to realistically make sense where we can start planning such a long term strategy. I personally think our cislunar / moonbase efforts are a better effort to put energy and resources into.
wpm 4mo ago
Solar and batteries get you through the entire day right here on Earth, plus you can shit in a toilet when you need to go on site to fix or upgrade something, not in a little tube. Plus you can probably just drive there instead of needing 15,000 feet/sec delta-v to get to orbit. And you can breathe. Surely the cost of batteries and panels do not exceed the costs and logistical pain-in-the-dick going into orbit will impose.
NishanStepak 4mo ago
[dead]
NishanStepak 4mo ago
There is a 150 KW Solar Array on Space X's first Data Center In Space It was launched in June of 2026. Technology improves at a steady pace. Space solar power is new and will improve over time because it is not a mature technology. Also, in space solar power is continuous and receives more energy than on the ground. https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/article/spacex-reveals-its-first-orbital-data-center-much-simpler-than-a-starlink-satellite-musk-says-141110185.html https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/article/spacex-...

root-parent 4mo ago

Data Centers in Space are a practical engineering impossibility, as well as making no economic sense. Engineering and the laws of physics get on the way. Just because Scott Manley refuses to call that out, so he can do another eight videos about it, don´t stop listening to somebody with the feet on the ground: "Orbital Data Centers: Spacecraft Constraints and Economic Viability" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27197 https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27197 "Hot AI in Cold Space: Thermal-Crosstalk-Aware Scheduling for Sustainable Orbital AI Clusters" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.26150 https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.26150 "Above the Cloud: Building Data Centers in Space - Richard Campbell - NDC Copenhagen 2026" - https://youtu.be/eo7MEPgWGic https://youtu.be/eo7MEPgWGic "Space Data Centers Are Dumb" - https://youtu.be/-w6G7VEwNq0 https://youtu.be/-w6G7VEwNq0

nancyminusone 4mo ago
I don't think they are impossible, just impractically expensive. That should be no problem for AI companies and their infinite access to capital. Nobody wants datacenters to be built around here on the ground, so I say get to spending. If it ends up bankrupting them, even better.
- Reddit_MLP2 4mo ago
  the way the crony capitalism economy works, it will bankrupt all of us well before it does the AI companies...
aeternum 4mo ago
Good thing Elon's companies have a history of moving engineering impossibilities from impossible to slightly late. Remember when globally competitive electric cars, re-usable boosters, catching a rocket with chopsticks, playing a fps game via a brain implant, and maintaining a satellite constellation at 480km LEO were also impossible?
- CuriouslyC 4mo ago
  There's a difference between "infeasible given materials and manufacturing capabilities of the time" and "infeasible as a scalable solution due to the laws of physics"

fnord77 4mo ago

I think everyone misses the real point - they're completely outside the jurisdiction of any government. Short of launching an ASAT and the risk of space debris, nobody will be able to shut them down.

advisedwang 4mo ago
What are they going to do in these orbiting datacenters that would be getting them shut down on earth?
- fnord77 4mo ago
  crypto scams, selling CSAM
hackeraccount 4mo ago
I don't think sovereignty works that way.
Ekaros 4mo ago
On other hand anyone using them for anything is certainly under some jurisdiction. Just because no one can get there physically. Does not mean people who use them are out of reach.
dialogbox 4mo ago
> nobody will be able to shut them down. ASAT can completely destroy it very easily. Then isn't that everyone who can send orbital object can shut them down?
- fnord77 4mo ago
  The only countries that can shoot down a satellite are United States, Russia, China, and India. Is the US going to launch a multimillion dollar multistage aegis missile to blow up a server that is serving illegal gambling?

ck2 4mo ago

have you ever seen a detailed photo of the ISS? * https://images2.imgbox.com/64/4b/GhtUtq1m_o.jpg https://images2.imgbox.com/64/4b/GhtUtq1m_o.jpg look at how massive the solar panels and more importantly the thermal radiators are outside compare to the size of the human habitat tubes "AI" in space would demand as much if not even more for each node

advisedwang 4mo ago
The hotter you are, the less radiators you need for the same heat dissipation. The ISS needs to run at human-comfort temperatures, but a datacenter can run much hotter than that (note the "at 60 °C" in the article). I forget the scaling parameter, but it's like T^2 or T^4 or something like that, so running hotter makes a huge difference. Of course, that's offset by the enormous heat output of a datacenter. I'm not saying it's viable, just that you actually need to do the math instead of eyeballing the ISS radiators.
- ck2 4mo ago
  I am curious to see if this causes an improvement in radiators though, that would be interesting or perhaps a whole new technology invented to vent the heat will be interesting to see what they come up with hmm, how do they radiate the heat from the capsule with humans going to the moon, now I am really curious, I've never seen panels like that on the lunar module past or future
  - advisedwang 4mo ago
    > how do they radiate the heat from the capsule with humans going to the moon https://blogs.esa.int/orion/2018/01/18/keeping-cool-while-staying-warm/ https://blogs.esa.int/orion/2018/01/18/keeping-cool-while-st... https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/a51a54b9-9700-4724-a3ce-87f0e7f654d8/content https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/a51a54b9-9... Looks like the regular exterior of the service module provides enough area for heat exchange.

throw310822 4mo ago

Rather than reasoning on the feasibility of data centers in space, what are the constraints that prevent them from being built on Earth? What's the minimum cost of building and operating in the US the equivalent of a 1M satellites data center?

xnx 4mo ago
The last straw their grasping at is "regulations" are to unfavorable on the ground so space makes sense. People repeat this as though there weren't still a dozen better options than space.

selivanovp 4mo ago

My bet is that all of this "Data centers in space" media campaign is just a cover for testing and launching military stations with an ability to attack ICBM's and ground targets all over the globe.

jaybrendansmith 4mo ago

I am waiting to reserve my place in Elysium. "Get your ticket to that wheel in space while there's time ... The fix is in ... You'll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky"