What a stupid fucking idea
Silicon valley in a nutshell. No end of idiot ideas and endless amount of money to fund them all.
It’s really difficult to cool things in space, and it’s really difficult to power stationary things in space. It’s also really expensive to put things in space so size/weight is a problem.
So if it’s not cheaper/better for cooling, and it’s not cheaper/better for power, and it’s not cheaper/better for rack space… why is there a focus on shipping compute to space?
The point I keep coming back to is that it’s really hard for the public to protest/damage/destroy data centres in space.
I think its simpler than that, its just stock price pumping. They can tell the plebs that they have the tech to put servers in space, and the plebs will eat it up and pump the stock.
You can still destroy the terrestrial base stations.
The only legitimate thing I can think of is that if we ever colonize the moon or mars, we are going to need compute and storage at the location. If we can launch equipment into orbit instead of waiting until it’s needed then it’ll give a headstart to test different solutions. If we can also figure out how to do that without having to build it or maintain it on the moon/mars, then that might result in less risk. But it’s all conjecture and you don’t know what you don’t know unless you try.
It’s extremely difficult from a cooling perspective IIRC, way more than on earth. Like you have to vent into a near vacuum, which is one of the best insulators.
You have to radiate it. If you vent, you run out of whatever medium you’re using to cool in a few minutes.
On the other hand, how easy is it to swap out a rack after a fault?
with a new satellite data center.
No laws and regulation in space.
But too bad, the customers aren’t also in space!
Even if they could pull it off, the data transmission speed would be sooooo bad relative to what it would take to ingest insane amount of data and then regurgitate it back.
If they’re putting the date centres in space I am going to problem with them anymore.
I think you a word
I wonder how they’re going to cool it?
Edit: Oh. So they’re just… not doing that. Okay. Hmm.
In the meantime, the company is taking baby steps. For now, the company is limited to just 15 minutes of operation in space before the chips have to be shut off to cool back down.
Not only that but,
…until it meets its final demise by burning up in the atmosphere.
Can’t event be recycled in any way. Literally maximum waste.
“It’s just a proof of concept guys, there are totally tons of good reasons to do this. We are definitely not just mashing sci-fi words together to scam investors.”
to replace it, they would have to launch a new satellite with new chips. its very wasteful.
the prototype satellite is part of the tech giant’s Project Suncatcher. As its name suggests, the goal is to take advantage of unfiltered sunlight around the clock to power AI data centers in our planet’s orbit — instead of crushing the electrical grid, spewing copious amounts of pollution, and draining fresh water supplies back on the ground.
They know they could use solar on the ground too right? They are making it seem like they care about the environment, but if there was a way to suck hydrocarbon power from the surface they would 100% do it
BuT iT’s UnFiLtErEd
solar on earth only works half the time
Not if you store the excess you produce in sodium batteries
dogshit ass timeline where billionaire sociopaths keep doing the wrong things got me truly irritated since 2020
That’s just what we need, a single individual server in space with incredibly long latency times. Really useful technology. This brilliant idea is brought to you by the same people that came up with the totally workable idea of mirrors in space to charge for sunlight.
I’m not going to say it’s brilliant, but if they can stick computers out there that get unlimited free solar power and free cooling courtesy of the icy death vacuum of space, is it really that bad?
If they could make it operational and scale, no more fucking stupid terrestrial data centers eating water and power here. Let them try it. They got plenty of money.
and free cooling courtesy of the icy death vacuum of space, is it really that bad?
Yes. You don’t get cooling AND vacuum from space, the vacuum aspect prevents the majority of cooling since there’s nothing to take that heat away other than IR radiation.
free cooling courtesy of the icy death vacuum of space
Cooling in space is actually really hard. The only way to get rid of heat out there is to radiate it away as black body radiation, which is a really really slow process. It’s like wrapping your computer in a really really thick blanket.
The solar power is the only thing space has going for it.
You can put solar panels on earth based data centers, you could have closed loop cooling systems on earth-based data centers. The location of the data centers isn’t the problem, it’s the fact they’re not doing any of that that’s a problem.
We need to stop subsidizing them. If they have the money to launch things into orbit then they have the money to build out sustainable infrastructure here on planet Earth.
where is the fiduciary duty to shareholders in burning warehouses full of cash on stupid bullshit like this?
i guess the shareholders are dipshits too
My dick pics gonna be an astronaut like Katy Perry.
Could Sergey be on it?
Building a relatively puny and ineffective data center because they’re idiots? perhaps. Doing it knowing it’ll provide overwhelming evidence that the idea is really dumb and making some well timed shorts against a certain launch company with an inflated value that’s been touting this very concept, maybe? (idk what I’m really talking about but it’s what comes to mind.)
It’s so stupid. Wouldn’t doing the same thing but on the bottom of the sea be less expensive, more realistic and with less of an environmental impact? You could cool the machines easier, get power from the water movement and there is plenty of space on the bottom.
even then the sea is somewhat unrealistic, because you would still be replacing the parts, you have to deal with corrosion, and other things like water pressure. and sea life likes to encrust on manmade objects too.
Sure. Everything needs maintenance. Still much much cheaper this way then the orbit.
Microsoft successfully did that somewhere near Scotland iirc.
I read somewhere that china was also doing some experiments. Oh here it is: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/09/worlds-first-wind-powered-underwater-datacentre-starts-operating-in-china
Though I swear I saw another experiment with the entire thing submerged all the way to the bottom in a marina or something, but cannot find it.
Nice! Oh, “Data Center”… Misread it as “CEO”.
“fridge-sized data center” REALLY cracks me up. Like, how much processing power can you fit in there, considering all the space you need for cooling. And then I’m imagining some bloke on the ISS looking outside and just seeing a fridge float there hehe.
What I don’t like is thinking further about this. If this is how they want to roll out a bit of processing power in space, I can totally imagine them just yeeting like 5000 fridges into LEO, polluting it even more :(
Also, how’d it get so far? None of the engineers at Google screaming about how this is a really REALLY bad idea? Do they think that these datacenters are gonna be more acceptable by the public than the ones on Earth and accept the lower efficiency for better PR? I mean, that would make sense, if Google would care about looks, which I don’t think they do.
Ignoring the hundred reasons this is dumb, I would just love to know the launch cost per expected compute.
Best quote from article is at the very end:
For now, the company is limited to just 15 minutes of operation in space before the chips have to be shut off to cool back down.
That will likely end up being 15 minutes total.
Just waiting for them to realize it’s more cost-effective to just keep destroying the environment.
Throwing shit in space burns heaps more CO2 than building it on the ground ya know, this destroys the environment more than if they were building it down here
