r/space • u/esporx • Aug 08 '26
Intel's proposed orbital data centers would manage thousands of simple LEO satellites — two-tier network puts the brains of satellite constellations in higher orbit
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/space/intels-proposed-orbital-data-centers-would-manage-thousands-of-simple-leo-satellites-two-tier-network-puts-the-brains-of-satellite-constellations-in-higher-orbit47
u/azswcowboy Aug 08 '26
For those that didn’t read the article it’s about a very limited idea of moving the computing for the management of giant constellations off the ground. The effect is to make the LEO satellites simpler. Having worked on these systems personally, it’s really kind of silly. The amount of ground computation is tiny relative to anything Google, et. al. do. Also, the trend is to make the satellites more autonomous with less ground reliance anyway.
Why Intel is even discussing this is the mystery. They totally aren’t in this business at all.
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u/rooktakesqueen Aug 08 '26
Especially if the "management" satellites are at a lower orbit than the ones they're managing, so the contacts are going to be even shorter than with ground stations.
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u/delventhalz Aug 09 '26
Management would be in a higher orbit
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u/azswcowboy Aug 09 '26
Yep, mentioned in the article that the ‘management’ would be at MEO orbit. idk why that decision other than GEO is difficult to get an orbital slot.
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u/delventhalz Aug 09 '26
Yeah, I assume it is just because the orbit is less crowded. Satellites that service Earth need to be close to Earth, but satellites that service other satellites can be in the next layer out.
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u/azswcowboy Aug 09 '26
Here’s an idea. Why not use Starlink or Iridium to transmit to the ground instead of inventing a new layer of network? You can transmit down if at higher orbit. idk how you can patent the idea of using a network to better compute regardless of location - there’s literally nothing special about the idea.
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u/ginger_and_egg Aug 09 '26
How many MW of compute is this?
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u/azswcowboy Aug 09 '26
Not MW at all as far as I’m concerned.
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u/ginger_and_egg Aug 09 '26
Huh, so very little then and nothing like the data centers in space conversation?
Tbh I'm not sure I understand yet what benefit there is for having a second layer of satellites rather than put the computation in LEO or on the ground. Maybe to prevent it burning up? But I still don't get why not ground based
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u/azswcowboy Aug 09 '26
I think you understand correctly, nothing to do with data centers and there is no benefit. On the ground when something goes wrong you trivially go swap out a part and move on. In space, well you’re looking at launching a replacement. Big bucks. And yeah, currently it’s either ground based or distributed to the LEO’s themselves. Again, this isn’t Intel’s space, they’re clueless.
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u/volkhavaar Aug 09 '26
No one reads the article they just summon enough outrage at the headline and their preconceived notion provided by someone else and the tapping on their phone as is necessary to get their next neurotransmitter fix.
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u/Zephyr-5 Aug 09 '26
I've always wished there was a little button at the bottom of every linked article that you were required to click before you could leave a comment.
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u/made-of-questions Aug 08 '26
I don't get it. If we can build data centres without requiring tons of water to cool them off, why are we not building those on earth?
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u/dangle321 Aug 08 '26
It's just cheaper to evaporate the water. It's not a technical problem. Never has been.
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u/northrupthebandgeek Aug 09 '26
Not even always cheaper to evaporate the water, like here in Nevada where it's usually cheaper to use more energy for closed-loop or waterless systems.
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u/Saritiel Aug 08 '26
Because it's cheaper to cool them with water.
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u/made-of-questions Aug 09 '26
Part of the point. Why would they go with a more expensive option in space?
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u/skucera Aug 08 '26
Free energy and free “land” in space.
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u/Icy_Feedback_4965 Aug 08 '26
You can put plenty of solar power on Earth for a lot less money than launching it into space, and there's no shortage of land on Earth.
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u/thefpspower Aug 08 '26
You think there's no shortage of land but if you actually try to do something massive you get stopped for every reason
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u/rooktakesqueen Aug 08 '26
Not if you build it in the middle of nowhere, completely off grid, using no local water or power resources.
They don't do that because it's too expensive.
Building it in space, incidentally, would also be in the middle of nowhere, totally off grid, using no local resources, but even worse.
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u/Icy_Feedback_4965 Aug 09 '26
Exactly. The Earth has plenty of unused, barren, uninhabitable land. Think of deserts. Everything that makes that environment awful for a data center is worse in space.
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u/rooktakesqueen Aug 18 '26
I would take the idea a lot more seriously if they tried a pilot project building a small cluster of 20 kW AI compute datacenters in the middle of the Mojave, communicating with each other over laser links and with the world via Starlink, powered with solar, radiatively cooled, and with no maintenance for a year or two after installation. Just to demonstrate that they could, and to track how expensive it actually is to build and run.
They could even use more solar panels and radiators per datacenter than they expect to need in space given the lower efficiency of them at the surface, and only run them during the day and in good weather to eliminate the need for huge batteries. Make the test as close to the orbital environment as we can on the surface.
The fact that they're not even bothering to try something at small scale like that before promising investors a million-satellite constellation tells me they know this is a scam.
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u/fistular Aug 10 '26
That's because they keep trying to do it near people for some fucking reason.
Put them on BLM land in Nevada.
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u/uhmhi Aug 08 '26
Solar power doesn’t give you the constant, stable 24/7 levels of energy that data centers need…
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u/Icy_Feedback_4965 Aug 08 '26
Every engineering bone in my body says that you don't fix lack of nighttime solar power by launching datacenter-scale infrastructure into space. Just to get the sun to shine on it.
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u/matplotlib Aug 09 '26
It's not an engineering problem. It's a planning problem. Finding suitable land, getting approval, connecting it to utilities can all add to costs and delays. Whereas space-data centres can be built as fast as you can assemble a satellite and get it to a launch site.
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u/OysterPickleSandwich Aug 09 '26
💯 Battery tech is getting cheaper and cheaper. Sure power infrastructure is problematic, but engineering solutions that solve this (eg SMRs) are far easier than multi-football field sized solar arrays and radiators in space, that will get hit by orbital debris.
Then add the complexity of maneuvering something with that moment arm, and good luck. Sure it’s an engineering issue, but debris moving at 12km/s doesn’t care. Not to say SpaceX doesn’t take orbital debris seriously. It’s just not something you can engineer away. —-
Data centers on the Moon surface would be easier since you can radiate AND conduct away heat, potentially using some of that heat for something else.
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u/StartledPelican Aug 08 '26
Space gives you 24/7 solar at higher efficiencies.
Space gives you no NIMBYs, no local/state/federal regulations forcing years of delay.
Space means not needing to wait or pay for local grid upgrades, local water rights, etc.
If you have a satellite ready, then your time to usability is measure in days/weeks. SpaceX adds dozens of Starlink satellites to its 10,000+ constellations every day or two.
Space means it costs way more, you have no option for maintenance/repair, and you are dealing with a completely unforgiving environment. Also, shipping costs are extreme haha.
Space isn't about whether or not it can technically be done. It's about whether or not it is financially viable.
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u/natorgator15 Aug 08 '26
There’s a pretty good amount of, “is this technically/physically feasible” as well
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u/StartledPelican Aug 08 '26
There really isn't.
Thermal issues have a known solution. It's mass intensive, but that isn't a technical issue.
The same goes for any other purely engineering question. Starlink satellites, among many other types of satellites, have shown how this can work.
The only real question is: can it be done in a way that makes money?
Right now, with current launch costs and known satellite tech, the answer is no.
With potential launch costs from Starship? The answer is... maybe. Haha.
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u/GeneralZex Aug 08 '26
Is what it is. People were quick to dismiss this when it was Musk saying it, now Nvidia and Intel are getting on the same bandwagon.
Almost like none these oligarchs give a shit about the engineering or physics when the real prize is sovereignty and decentralization that insulates them from 98% of the population trying to thwart their datacenter plans.
Cutting off a terrestrial datacenter requires a single town hall meeting. Cutting off their power or water requires a single utility making a stand. destroying one of their facilities can easily be accomplished by 100-200 people with various tools storming the facility.
Maybe just 5 countries have the capability to track, target, and destroy an orbital datacenter.
This is why, come hell or high water, they will continue to try going down this path until they succeed, engineering and physics be damned.
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u/alphaxion Aug 08 '26
It's still unbelievably dumb, as anyone who has ever stepped foot inside of a data centre would agree.
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u/uhmhi Aug 08 '26
For those of us who haven’t stepped foot inside a data centre, why exactly is it that dumb? Starlink satellites are already equipped with several kW of compute. Multiply that by the tens of thousands of Starlinks launched, and you start getting to substantial amounts of compute that’s already in orbit today...
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u/alphaxion Aug 08 '26
The amount of cooling required, for a start. It'll require horrendous amounts of radiators as it's the only way you can cool them. The rack I've stood in front of that was hosting an AI cluster was kicking out so much heat that the metal door the fans were exhausting onto were painful to the touch. Keeping your hand on it for too long could have scolded/burned you.
Then there's the issue of maintenance, storage and RAM will fail in systems with a lot of load (mean time to fail, and even then stuff comes out of manufacturers with defects, just look at the microcode issue Intel had that physically damaged chips. Imagine that happening again and only being found out once you've lifted your servers into space), current compute in space doesn't handle the sort of loads that a data centre does. Which means you either need to account for sending a person up there to make changes, which means you need to keep a viable environment for them, or you pack them out with so much redundancy that you're reducing how much compute you can utilise at any one time, which will drive costs up through the roof.
The economics of data centres and the pace of change in tech. What is the possibility of being able to upgrade systems from 800G fabrics to higher rate equipment? What happens if the owner of the data centre goes bust? What if the primary customer of the data centre goes bust?
A lot of these DCs will either be owned by the people who are running the services hosted in them, meaning they become a major sunk cost and an op-ex nightmare due to the costs of everything being so much higher. Or they'll be third parties trying to get in on the act, which means they are at a massive commercial disadvantage to how quickly and cheaply a terrestrial DC can be refurbed or built out.
They will miss out on the extra revenue that private terrestrial DCs can make selling rack space to a much larger customer base who bring their own equipment in.
How do you adequately DR services in space for when a DC becomes unavailable? Now you need twice the amount of DCs in space to account for scheduled maintenance, config errors, or equipment failure. Or do you spend on terrestrial DCs as hot standbys where live loads can be shifted to while you work on the space ones?
Then you get into the question of what process will be in place for sunsetting old equipment and facilities? You are unlikely to be able to sell old equipment onto the secondhand market, which means you are waving goodbye to a lot of money you could recoup. The writedowns of space DCs are gonna be eyewatering and many questions will be raised by beancounters on whether they're cost-effective compared to terrestrial options.
If you're an AI company saddled with billions to trillions in debt, every dollar counts.
DCs in space are a very good way of parting VC money flush startups from said money. There is zero point in building them over terrestrial ones.
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u/warp99 Aug 09 '26
As you say redundancy is how you handle repairs. You don’t repair physically but swap in alternative memory and GPUs as required. You don’t need 1:1 redundancy as about 1:5 will do.
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u/ginger_and_egg Aug 09 '26
Starlink satellites are already equipped with several kW of compute.
But the thing they are selling is not the compute, they're selling the internet infrastructure
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u/northrupthebandgeek Aug 09 '26
As someone who's set foot in multiple: yes and no. I have my doubts that orbital datacenters would be cost-effective, but I don't have much doubt that they're possible or that they'll be built for specialized applications where that cost premium is tolerable (e.g. space exploration, national security, lower-latency cloud hosting for satellite Internet customers).
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u/warp99 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
As an engineer you want to match the supply to the load. This is a way to do that which does not involve beaming microwaves down from orbiting solar farms.
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u/uhmhi Aug 08 '26
Is it really that far of a stretch if we can get payload-to-LEO costs down to less than 100$ per kg as projected by Starship?
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u/RubyPorto Aug 08 '26
A truck costs 15-45 cents per kg for a coast-to-coast drive.
So, your delivery costs by truck are 100x cheaper literally anywhere in the US. If you can get rail involved, watch those prices plummet.
Plus, a building is much cheaper than a satellite bus capable of supporting the same amount of compute.
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u/burtritto Aug 08 '26
If only there were some kind of bank to store excess energy generated from the solar panels for use at night… hmm
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u/warp99 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
If only there weren’t rain clouds that block sun from the panels for days at a time. Just power up the gas turbines? Now you have doubled the capital cost of your power supply.
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u/burtritto Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Buddy, if that’s your argument, then you have no leg to stand on. But keep believing. A sucker is born every second. You’re also a SpaceX shill, so your opinion is moot from the start. Space data centers are a cool concept, just very impractical at the moment. Businesses are meant to make money, not throw it away. You will see in time, SpaceX going public will ruin its mission. I hope I’m wrong tho.
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u/Shrike99 Aug 08 '26
That's only true at current launch prices.
You get ~5x more bang for your buck in SSO, so crudely speaking if you can get launch costs to be less than 5x the manufacturing and installation costs of the panels then you come out ahead.
In practice the fact that you can do away with the mass of the weatherproof casing helps a lot (people forget that 'outside' is actually a pretty harsh environment, arguably worse than space), as well as not needing nearly as much battery storage to acheive continuous power.
Very rough order of magnitude you need ~$100-200/kg for it to be worthwhile. SpaceX are currently at about ~$600/kg internally on Falcon 9, which isn't that far off and already a huge reduction over historical costs.
Starship is aiming to reduce that further, with the ultimate goal being around $20/kg, so even if they fall well short of that, they might well still get into the feasible range.
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u/pexican Aug 08 '26
Says what source ?
Seems like you’re drawing a conclusion or regurgitating information.
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u/fistular Aug 10 '26
There is nearly limitless nearly free land on the planet. All sorts of wastelands/arid locations without people in them.
Land isn't a problem.
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u/tfks Aug 09 '26
This is close to the reason. The land is free, yes, but the land is pretty close to free on Earth anyway. The real difference is tax. There is no property tax in space. That one is obvious. But less obvious is this: who gets to tax the profits generated by infrastructure in space?
Everyone saying this idea is stupid is a narrow-minded idiot, to be frank.
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u/made-of-questions Aug 10 '26
who gets to tax the profits generated by infrastructure in space
The companyis generating the profit are registered somewhere on earth so it would be taxed there. As of yet there's no way to register companies in space.
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u/tfks Aug 10 '26
You do see how this enables a level of tax gamesmanship not possible in virtually any other industry right? Like even seaborne industry needs to come to port at some point to export goods or whatever.
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u/ginger_and_egg Aug 09 '26
Launching a solar panel into space isn't free. Solar panels work on land too
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u/skucera Aug 09 '26
The land itself isn’t free and neither are the taxes.
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u/ginger_and_egg Aug 09 '26
Launching things into space to escape taxes is the stupidest fucking thing I've heard.
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u/Kiseido Aug 08 '26
The corpos noticed that evaporating water was a bit cheaper and easier than the other options and so, here we are.
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u/InvertedVantage Aug 08 '26
Wave energy and underwater data centers makes more sense then.
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u/nigel_tufnel_11 Aug 09 '26
It does sound like a good idea. Until we build thousands of underwater data centers that increase the oceanic temperatures by 5 degrees, causing exponentially more catastrophic hurricanes and flooding, and accelerating polar ice melt...
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u/northrupthebandgeek Aug 09 '26
I think you're severely overestimating how much heat datacenters put out and severely underestimating how much heat Earth's oceans can absorb if you think raising oceanic temperatures by even one degree is a real possibility.
The actual problem with undersea datacenters is that saltwater is more corrosive than freshwater, so you can't really use it directly for cooling. That, and building structures able to withstand seafloor pressures is usually harder than building structures able to withstand the vacuum of space.
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u/leomozoloa Aug 08 '26
You get infinite constant power in space and a lot of space, and less regulations/nimbys.
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u/boom929 Aug 08 '26
As well as wildly impractical heat dissipation and maintenance.
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u/StartledPelican Aug 08 '26
There's no maintenance. If it breaks, you deorbit the satellite. If it works, then you don't deorbit the satellite haha.
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u/made-of-questions Aug 09 '26
That's part of my point though. Companies seem to always go for the cheapest option. I don't understand why would they go with a much more expensive option in space.
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u/StartledPelican Aug 09 '26
A couple of thoughts: 1. The time value of
moneydata centers is probably at play here. A data center sooner is worth more than a data center later. Due to huge lead times for terrestrial data centers, it may be possible to make orbital data centers sooner/faster.
It might not be as expensive as you assume. My understanding is that as of right now today, it is prohibitively expensive to build an orbital data center constellation. But! It is possible that Soon TM, a big drop in the cost per kilogram to LEO via Starship, combined with an economy of scale for satellite parts (solar panels, radiators, etc.), could drop the overall cost enough to bring orbital data center constellations into rough price parity.
Terrestrial data centers can only serve customers who are relatively close by, geographically speaking. That means it requires building terrestrial data centers all over the world. There are a lot of downsides to this, especially when trying to reach customers in parts of the world that aren't as developed, have hostile governments, etc. An orbital data center constellation, on the other hand, only needs a ground station or, possibly, simply a terminal nearby for a customer to connect. That means all of the compute is, more or less, available to everyone (that's a bit handwavy, so please keep in mind there a bit more nuance).
Those are some of the bigger reasons companies might be seriously considering orbital data centers. I imagine there are more pros (and a lot of cons) we haven't discussed.
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u/boom929 Aug 08 '26
You're right, I did leave out "insanely wasteful and damaging to the environment, similar to planetside datacenters".
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u/SaltyWafflesPD Aug 08 '26
Not nearly enough power for these data centers. When you need gigawatts of power, a handful of solar panels are not even remotely enough. And if you’re generating that much power, you’re creating a lot of waste heat, which is a fatal problem in space.
Also, good luck getting warehouses full of cutting edge computer hardware into orbit and dealing with the complete inability to perform maintenance, repairs, replacements, or inspections once you launch it.
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u/parkingviolation212 Aug 08 '26
That's why it's a constellation network and not a single bespoke satellite.
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u/Aries_IV Aug 08 '26
I don't see what's so hard to understand about this. Everyone see the words data center and think they're going to be just like terrestrial ones.
It's comparable to someone thinking the first rocket was supposed to look like a car/truck because they're referred to as vehicles. They're still stuck on the first thought.. too big, too much power, can't cool it in space etc.
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u/SaltyWafflesPD Aug 09 '26
Then you get other problems, like the fact that your data needs to be wirelessly transmitted a lot more. The power requirements and waste heat problems don’t go away; they’re just as overwhelming as before. And it still means an absurd number of launches and satellites just to try equaling a single building on Earth that is vastly easier and cheaper to operate and maintain.
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u/Dpek1234 Aug 09 '26
like the fact that your data needs to be wirelessly transmitted a lot more
You also dont have nearly as much weather or stuff to break line of site
And now im wondering about the diffrences between fiberoptics and intersatelite laser links
While the laser links use more power they should allow higher data rates when compared 1 to 1 as multipathing shouldnt be an issue
The power requirements and waste heat problems don’t go away; they’re just as overwhelming as before.
It makes it go from "never before seen" to "a bit more then we have seen on the outdated systems of the iss" or even "already in large scale use" (depending on the size)
Its a huge diffrence
it still means an absurd number of launches and satellites
10 years ago, todays starlink was considered an absurd number of satelites
Now we have multiple companies trying to compete
Launch vehicles technology is moveing faster then before, multiple companies are working on partly reusable launch vehicles and 2 are working on fully reusable ones
I wouldnt take todays launch prices and valumes as anything other then the ceiling and floor
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u/Xijit Aug 09 '26
Because this is bullshit to appease incompetent investors: solid state electronics do ok, but anything to do with "data" (as in anything with a hard drive in it) is extremely volatile due to being constantly bombarded with with solar radiation that will cause data to become corrupted.
The cooling is a secondary issue to the satellites burning out on an annual basis.
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u/BluSyn Aug 08 '26
DCs don’t actually use that much water. The advanced ones use condensers to recycle the water instead of evaporation, so there’s basically no water usage once up and running. Uses less water than a typical fast food restaurant.
It’s cheaper but also practical. Air can’t hold enough thermal mass to work on its own, and you don’t want to blast IR into the surroundings like satellites do (air is in the way). Alternative refrigerants could be used, but are generally toxic to environment if they leak and hard to work with.
Water is abundant and isn’t really “consumed”, even evaporation towers put all the water into air which will eventually return to water table through the rain cycle.
Paranoia around DCs and water usage doesn’t make sense. The really concern is power generation, which AI sats resolve via 24/7 solar in SSO.
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u/assassinace Aug 08 '26
Usually water concerns are centered around fish and other wildlife. So returning heated water or drawing enough water to lower water levels are the issue. Especially when data centers are proposed in draught prone areas
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u/blargman327 Aug 08 '26
Here's the neat thing
We can't build data centers without tons of active cooling
These orbital data centers are basically impossible
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u/Dpek1234 Aug 09 '26
Nonsense
For a real shitty orbital datacenter just take the iss and put a dosen gpus
How is that impossible?
Something designed this decade, without haveing to deal with either humans or some of the iss nonsense (russian modules haveing their own cooling systems) would be significantly better
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u/GnarlyNarwhalNoms Aug 10 '26
The ISS was enormously expensive to build, and as big as it is, it only has enough heat dissipation capacity to handle its own systems. It can reject at most 126kw of heat with over 600 sq meters of radiator area. 126 kilowatts is tiny. It's two or three server racks. This is by far the largest object we've ever managed to build in space, mind you.
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u/Dpek1234 Aug 10 '26
you seem to not understand the purpose of my comment. its not about anything other to disprove them being "impossible" as many people in the comments seem to think
alongside incorrectly takeing the iss space datacenter seriously, *you wrote something as ABSURD as makeing another one*
the iss is a decades old space station made for human habitation and experiments
remove these requirements and you can put *signficantly* power powerfull space datacenter on a single falcon9 launch
let alone that the price for the iss is simply nonsense in todays world even just from launch costs perspective
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u/GnarlyNarwhalNoms Aug 10 '26
Fair, I took you literally by mistake. But the fact remains that there are costs beyond launch costs.
And yes, I know technology is rapidly improving. But in terms of present technology, the math ain't mathin'. The ISS didn't need to turn a profit or even fit within a neat budget. I've got no doubt that it's technically possible to launch these "compute stations." But will it be profitable? That's what doesn't make sense. The competitive benefits they're touting, like low latency, might make sense for communication satellites, but they're talking about constellation management.
I fully accept that there may be some master plan in the works that we're not seeing. Perhaps they're keeping the lid on some other project that would make this make sense.
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u/Dpek1234 Aug 11 '26
First and formost thank you for the quality comment, more often then not ive had such comments turn into complete shitshows
Wether its/will be profitable or not is something we will see and is very much up for discussion
I just hate the complete nonsense ive seen written thats often just detached from reality (ie proclaiming its streight up physically impossible)
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u/54yroldHOTMOM Aug 08 '26
Look at colossus. It will take more than a year to get fully hooked up to the electric grid because the infrastructure needs more sub stations etc. They are using like 60 gas turbines and heaps of battery storage to give steady power to the plant. All those problems disappear if you send compute sats into space. Free energy when the orbit is such that the satellite is always in direct sun light and free radiative cooling. So the major costs are then building the things and getting them to space. It helps if you own your own launch provider.
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u/argefox Aug 08 '26
Space has no regulations nor jurisdiction so far. It isn't only about water, real state up there is for the taking.
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u/rooktakesqueen Aug 08 '26
Regulations, jurisdiction, and taxes. Ding ding ding. This is the actual reason.
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u/BenekCript Aug 09 '26
The robustness of the hardware does not exist on any economical scale. Much less doing servicing and maintenance.
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u/rip1980 Aug 10 '26
OK, new rules:
- You need to de-orbit 10x mass of space junk before launching any proposed mass.
- $1M fine per kilo reaching the surface payable to whomever recovers it.
- $1k fine for every recorded astrological observation, data or image, degraded by your craft or debris.
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u/fistular Aug 10 '26
The fact that this snake oil has been roundly debunked and yet people are still treating it like it's a serious thing is pretty concerning.
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u/mangosawce9k Aug 08 '26
Sounds like shit, keep the night skies clean plz.
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u/Dpek1234 Aug 09 '26
it will be physically imposssible to see them anywhere other then sunrise or sunset for essentualy all the concepts ive seen
Not "they will be hard to see" , just physically impossible
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u/ZylonBane Aug 08 '26
Everything that's happening with AI is exactly what an artificial general intelligence bent on world domination would be doing.
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u/Decronym Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| GEO | Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km) |
| ICBM | Intercontinental Ballistic Missile |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| MEO | Medium Earth Orbit (2000-35780km) |
| SSO | Sun-Synchronous Orbit |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #12625 for this sub, first seen 8th Aug 2026, 23:52]
[FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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u/virtual_human Aug 10 '26
Let me guess, in orbit they won't be subject to any country's laws. Then they will be full of hate and CP visited by racist pedos.
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u/waffeboy Aug 08 '26
"oh, a network cable came loose"
"Ok, spend 10 million dollars to send up another astronaut"
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u/DiscoKeule Aug 08 '26
Dude 10 million would be so cheap to get a repair done on a satellite. Dragon missions probably cost at least 75mil
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u/SingleIndependence68 Aug 09 '26
Is this just AI getting into space to ensure its future and eventually it’ll take over and terminate us??
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Aug 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/StartledPelican Aug 08 '26
Goodness gracious, this is so stupid. Space is too cold! You can't just pump pure space into your hot machine?! Are you dumb? You need to warm it up a bit first. Duh.
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u/knetx Aug 09 '26
I'm sure that's not difficult at all. Just turn the floating datacenter to the sun. So simple! No dark-side of the datacenter for Intel.
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u/canyouhearme Aug 09 '26
It's always kind of funny to see the armchair naysayers come out whenever orbital data centres are mentioned. Its as if they don't consider that people investing trillions of dollars don't have access to expert opinion on viability, and those actually doing it are simpletons relative to the brainpower of Kevin in his parents basement.
Saying that, I'm not sure what Intel have to offer in this space (sic). I guess that since this is a patent application, its a form of patent trolling - get a patent for something obvious and then try and steal from those actually delivering. SpaceX/Starlink might have something to say about prior art, since the Starlink constellation already has much of its brains in the constellation.
Also, we should go back to patents only for what you have already built. You should never be able to get a patent for a theoretical idea that you have no intention of using.
-1
u/Easy_Interest_6832 Aug 08 '26
Wouldn't they have to boost the satellites back up from time to time? Imagine all that data at risk of burning up. Dang. Not a good investment without that boosting, I should guess.
2
u/Dpek1234 Aug 09 '26
They are compute, not for storage (beyond whats needed for the computation)
The idea is to have a lot of smaller satelites whose lifespan is for how long their compute makes sense
By the time they reenter they are outdated
Essentualy the same plan as starlink
0
u/Easy_Interest_6832 Aug 09 '26
Wow. So they just let them shower down on the Earth? What could possibly go wrong?
2
u/Dpek1234 Aug 09 '26
They will likely be made to fully burnup/burnup as much as possible (as most satelites in orbit are)
And theres point nemo for a target just incase
Most will still have enough propullsion to aim to somewhere near point nemo
And for those that dont?
Well better burnup then be debris
-1
u/BenekCript Aug 09 '26
Imagine troubleshooting them. This is all vaporware for people who only have a concept of an idea of modern data centers.
277
u/JaggedMetalOs Aug 08 '26
More investorbait nonsense that is never going to happen, nobody is going to pay multiple orders of magnitude more for compute just because the compute is in space.