Orbital data centers look more viable than we expected going in and the case rests primarily on launch cost. The engineering challenges seem significant but none appear intractable. Commercial off-the-shelf solar, passive radiators, and standard error-correcting codes seem sufficient for a baseline architecture. We expect limited demos and shipments of compute to orbit in the coming years but our best estimate is that orbital data centers are unlikely to represent a meaningful share of compute before 2030. They might scale quickly thereafter however, and are more likely to be bottlenecked by chip production rates rather than by launch cadence. A generally important dynamic is that terrestrial data centers likely face headwinds that worsen as compute scales up while orbital data centers face constraints that relax with scale.
The viability of space DCs seem to depend entirely on the existence of higher latency, lower throughput, single card to single server workloads, which IMO isn't the primary class of workload today (and if one holds the belief that frontier will maintain their dominant position, this will remain rack/row/facility level, which isn't viable for orbital facilities to handle).
If that workload does expand in usage, and the economics of orbital DCs make sense (with high launch costs, zero ability to do maintenance, and weight penalties for shielding and radiators), then surely ocean based data centers (e.g. Panthalassa) make more sense (lower 'launch' costs, high latency on maintenance, no weight penalties), and if those make sense then surely the distributed land based facilities (e.g. Rune Energy) or home based facilities (e.g. Span XFRA) make even more sense (easier maintenance, low/no permitting overhead because they're covered by existing permits, reasonable quality terrestrial fiber internet).
The only place where a space data center makes sense is in Mars orbit to reduce the amount of mass that needs to be landed. Every thing else is a smoke and mirrors game to justify rolling a bunch of failed businesses into SpaceX.
Even then. If you're building a million satellites, they only need to be about 42 meters long for you to make them into a contiguous ring in LEO. Smaller (22.5m) or fewer (537,000) for the same in a 200 km orbit around Mars.
Do that, and you can quickly bootstrap an orbital ring and make rockets obsolete from surface to orbit of either body.
In the case of Mars, the planet-wide dust storms make
it a good idea to locate your PV off-planet, and an orbital ring is also very convenient for that.
What specifically do you disagree with from the article to say its Smoke and Mirrors? I think their analysis is reasonable and that it will reduce to a launch cost problem.
Giving it a quick look they're doing the same thing as everyone else and handwaving away really difficult engineering problems with some back of the envelope math that only looks at one or two aspects.
Like their section on collision avoidance isn't any more sophisticated than "Starlink has a great record so far" when we're talking about a very different scale of how much mass and surface area has to be moved around in a coordinated way.
This is in effect an editorial from two postgrads, not an actual detailed workup. I don't feel like spending time going into any more effort based on that.
I fail to see the economic case. You will need very large solar arrays and radiation hardened components, both of which make it uneconomical compared to a data center on Earth. This is another of Musk's genius ideas like the tunnels that were supposed to be carrying us under cities by now.
It's difficult to imagine any sort of compute in space given the state of the art rad hardened processor is about as fast as a computer Apple sold in 1998.
Musk's "genius idea" there was to (pardon the pun) derail high speed rail and other similar investments so he could sell more cars.
What are Hyperloop/Boring actually doing now? It doesn't take that much investment to human-drive a 10-20 Teslas up and down the Vegas Strip in a straight tunnel at normal speeds.
> and becomes cheaper than any current terrestrial energy source at around $50/kg
Heck for $50/kg I could see it, too. Now with Falcon 9 or Heavy it's on the order of thousands, isn't it? Just need a measly two orders of magnitude improvement and then we can start talking.
No we will not. The reason is simple: Space is not in the cloud, it is above. Anything that's not in the cloud is bad.
Silliness aside, has anyone come up with a cooling system that would work well for a friggin data center in space? Or is it still all just a wishful thinking game, ignoring physics?
> Silliness aside, has anyone come up with a cooling system that would work well for a friggin data center in space? Or is it still all just a wishful thinking game, ignoring physics
That's perfectly viable.
However at the temperatures chips operate at, because stuff on the ground is getting convective cooling as well as radiative, a radiator designed for LEO will reject slightly more heat on the ground than it would in orbit.
It is absolutely a wishful thinking game, ignoring physics. It's a bet made by investors who don't know or care about the science, and are looking for a modal outcome of a failed company purchased by SpaceX or by an even dumber company looking to compete with SpaceX.
I wouldn't put it past him to launch 20,000 of them before moving on to the next thing.
Or two. It's a broad range, but with his personality and prior history both are possible before he announces whatever the next pivot is.
Just, not a million. There's better things to do with the capacity to put a million up there, and better places to put a million (last I checked) 120 kW compute racks and associated PV systems.
Conclusions
Orbital data centers look more viable than we expected going in and the case rests primarily on launch cost. The engineering challenges seem significant but none appear intractable. Commercial off-the-shelf solar, passive radiators, and standard error-correcting codes seem sufficient for a baseline architecture. We expect limited demos and shipments of compute to orbit in the coming years but our best estimate is that orbital data centers are unlikely to represent a meaningful share of compute before 2030. They might scale quickly thereafter however, and are more likely to be bottlenecked by chip production rates rather than by launch cadence. A generally important dynamic is that terrestrial data centers likely face headwinds that worsen as compute scales up while orbital data centers face constraints that relax with scale.
If that workload does expand in usage, and the economics of orbital DCs make sense (with high launch costs, zero ability to do maintenance, and weight penalties for shielding and radiators), then surely ocean based data centers (e.g. Panthalassa) make more sense (lower 'launch' costs, high latency on maintenance, no weight penalties), and if those make sense then surely the distributed land based facilities (e.g. Rune Energy) or home based facilities (e.g. Span XFRA) make even more sense (easier maintenance, low/no permitting overhead because they're covered by existing permits, reasonable quality terrestrial fiber internet).
Do that, and you can quickly bootstrap an orbital ring and make rockets obsolete from surface to orbit of either body.
In the case of Mars, the planet-wide dust storms make it a good idea to locate your PV off-planet, and an orbital ring is also very convenient for that.
Like their section on collision avoidance isn't any more sophisticated than "Starlink has a great record so far" when we're talking about a very different scale of how much mass and surface area has to be moved around in a coordinated way.
This is in effect an editorial from two postgrads, not an actual detailed workup. I don't feel like spending time going into any more effort based on that.
Starcloud-1 is already in orbit, and many other plans by them and other firms are already well into development.
And Lonestar has a backup server on the moon. Seriously.
What are Hyperloop/Boring actually doing now? It doesn't take that much investment to human-drive a 10-20 Teslas up and down the Vegas Strip in a straight tunnel at normal speeds.
Heck for $50/kg I could see it, too. Now with Falcon 9 or Heavy it's on the order of thousands, isn't it? Just need a measly two orders of magnitude improvement and then we can start talking.
Silliness aside, has anyone come up with a cooling system that would work well for a friggin data center in space? Or is it still all just a wishful thinking game, ignoring physics?
That's perfectly viable.
However at the temperatures chips operate at, because stuff on the ground is getting convective cooling as well as radiative, a radiator designed for LEO will reject slightly more heat on the ground than it would in orbit.
I mean, Elon will probably shoot some GPUs up there and call it a success, but I'm not sure that should could at "data centers in space."
Or two. It's a broad range, but with his personality and prior history both are possible before he announces whatever the next pivot is.
Just, not a million. There's better things to do with the capacity to put a million up there, and better places to put a million (last I checked) 120 kW compute racks and associated PV systems.
Sorry. Not sorry.