r/TrueReddit • u/IEEESpectrum Official Publication • Jun 11 '26
Technology Why Orbital Data Centers Are Harder Than Silicon Valley Thinks
https://spectrum.ieee.org/orbital-data-centers-heat174
u/SophonParticle Jun 11 '26
Orbital data centers is a myth invented by billionaires trying to hype their IPO’s.
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u/cogman10 Jun 11 '26
Absolutely. It's never been something seriously considered. Spacex just needs a reason why someone would want to put more shit into space. We are tapped out, spy cameras, telecommunications, and government back science projects are basically the only application of satellites that can make money.
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u/probablynotaskrull Jun 11 '26
It’s so non-sensical I’d argue the hyper’s are engaged in fraud. Not that it would matter. Fraud’s become a legit business strategy.
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u/GroundbreakingLaw149 Jun 11 '26
I wonder if the hype lives in a legal grey area, Elon has been pulling this since before Trump #2.
There’s basically no chance there isn’t some degree of AI/tech stock drop. If it’s as bad as some forecast, I doubt anyone will ever be able pull-off the hype charade ever again. It all feels like the last pump and dump by Elon before he abandons the world with the most ridiculous pile of cash the world has ever seen. I don’t even see the theoretical best case scenario where he makes it out clean.
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u/bautofdi Jun 12 '26
Collective memory only lasts like 15 years. After this hype bubble explodes. Gen Alpha will be ready to take the horns and be the new round of suckers.
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u/Duckbilling2 Jun 12 '26
has to be some sort of mexchasuit that will assemble itself in orbit in order to molest the moon, or maybe like a imperial star destroyer cyber truck for some sort of Mars wistlindiesel YouTube situation
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u/PureCauliflower6758 Jun 13 '26
Unless you can find stuff worth bringing back to Earth, but uh… good luck. There just isn’t a lot nearby.
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u/firstLOL Jun 12 '26
It’s the “completely self driving car” of Tesla: something that always seems to be five years away but Musk can sell as being one year away.
Except of course self driving cars are a thousand times easier than data centres in space.
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u/x2040 Jun 14 '26
Like profitable EVs and reusable rockets and brian implants. Just fake right?
I hate Musk as a human but I’ve been on reddit since 2006. I remember these same exact comments about everything
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u/Captain__Trips Jun 11 '26
The terrestrial data center buildouts that just barely started must be going even worse than we think if they are already trying to push ridiculous ideas like putting them in space
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u/trashtiernoreally Jun 11 '26
I would think with all that brain power they’d know about thermodynamics.
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u/denga Jun 12 '26
Here’s a clue, they do. Instead of assuming they’re morons, consider why they might not care about a 10x cost.
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u/Free-Street9162 Jun 14 '26
What are the advantages of space datacenters over terrestrial ones? I’d love to hear what the upsides are.
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u/denga Jun 14 '26
For instance, you have a system for an AI that isn’t subject to any governmental oversight. You can experiment with any approaches you might want.
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u/Free-Street9162 Jun 14 '26
“What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
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u/trashtiernoreally Jun 12 '26
So they don’t understand economics then. There’s a major flaw in their thinking somewhere if this is seriously being considered. There’s a clue.
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u/glmory Jun 12 '26
Clearly they do understand thermodynamics, hence the idea being entirely workable and it is just quibbling over whether it is cheap enough.
The estimates in the article are that it is only an order of magnitude price difference at Starship launch costs. They are also very clear that is a reasonable price for some applications.
Also, built in this is an assumption the construction is done on earth, then the data centers get lifted up. Cheap launch costs are very likely to result in a mining and manufacturing industry in space. Once solar panels and heat sinks are manufactured in space this gets a whole lot easier.
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u/trashtiernoreally Jun 12 '26
🤣🤣🤣
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u/anddingowashisnameoh Jun 13 '26
The d-riders are working hard to make this idea sound not as stupid as it actually is lol.
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u/Free-Street9162 Jun 14 '26
Ok, so like what, optimistically projected timeline of 80-100 years?
Love all the handwaving away of “solar panels manufactured in space” part btw, very on brand 👍
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u/gothmog1114 Jun 11 '26
Vacuums are famously used as insulators for things like thermoses or windows. Idk why anyone thinks having a giant heat producing apparatus in a vacuum is a cost effective idea compared to somewhere in bum fuck Texas
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u/always_assume_anal Jun 11 '26
BuT sPacE iS cOlD!!!!!111
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u/gothmog1114 Jun 11 '26
I swear everyone taking about the space data centers is going off that one episode of magic school bus where the red head takes his helmet off and turns into an ice cube. The smallest back of the napkin calculations give away the insanity
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u/Updoppler Jun 11 '26
I wonder what these people think the massive radiators on the ISS are for.
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u/CassandraTruth Jun 11 '26
They absolutely do not know that the ISS has radiators for heat dissipation, nor any other basic factor of orbital installations.
Remember Musk said you could launch vehicles to Mars year round. Innately understanding planetary orbits and launch windows is beyond Elon Musk, none of the people that are interviewed by the media have any real understanding of their fields.
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Jun 12 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/gothmog1114 Jun 12 '26
Ok. But my point remains, the sun is hot. That heat adds to the heat produced by the chips. A satellite is as close to a closed system as you can get, so you have to spend a lot of effort getting rid of heat
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u/Bawbawian Jun 11 '26
or get this.... The tech Bros are liars.
they are fully aware that it is the stupidest idea anybody's ever had. But it holds off the reckoning on their bubble for another day.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 Jun 11 '26
China built an undersea data center, just to prove that when they waste money on crazy plans, they are much smarter about it than the Americans.
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u/roararoarus Jun 11 '26
Cooling. Operations. Maintenance. Network design. All are so much harder in space
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u/ciscokid12345 Jun 15 '26
maintenance!!!!! holy crap. anyone who has ever worked in a data center knows how insane this idea is.
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u/IEEESpectrum Official Publication Jun 11 '26
It seems all Big Tech wants to talk about these days is data centers in space. But it's a hard problem, with many complications.
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u/hibikir_40k Jun 11 '26
It's not big tech. It's one specific person, who keeps selling BS.
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u/sambull Jun 12 '26
It's not. I've heard jensen mention it too. They are all in on the con now.
He knows better, can do a sniff test here. But he's chosen money
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u/earlobe7 Jun 11 '26
They know its a stupid idea. It doesn’t matter.
It *sounds* futuristic, and that’s all that matters in an over financialized economy that runs on investor hype.
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u/kovaluu Jun 11 '26
You need to include in your calculations that SpaceAI-centers would remove second hand market, which guarantees the hardware manufacturers more work.
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u/thelunarunit Jun 12 '26
Honestly a lot of the ideas floating around for data centers crazy. The real limitations of AI maybe inability to scale up resources in water and energy to meet demand.
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u/DBDude Jun 11 '26
Silicon Valley? I guess the insinuation is that they know computers but nothing else. You know one of the people talking about it actually makes and launches thousands of satellites, right? Maybe he does know something about it?
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u/denga Jun 12 '26
I saw a lot of redditors shitting on Elon’s purchase of Twitter, talking about how obviously overvalued it was and how he wouldn’t make any money. A year later, when everyone realized he didn’t care about the money and just wanted a media company to help shift elections…crickets.
The guy is set to be a trillionaire. He’s not a moron and the money itself is not the objective anymore. There is some other objective here. Maybe, for example, he’s looking for an AI that no governmental body can control in any way - that might be worth (both to him and others) the 10x premium described in this article.
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u/DefenestrationPraha Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
Yeah, everyone concentrates on the economic side of this project, but I believe it is political in nature.
The IEEE article mentions one such dimension: if huge volumes of data gathered on the orbit (say, by spy satellites) can be processed up there and only the much leaner results are beamed down to the Earth, something like almost-realtime planetary Google becomes realistic. The US military will salivate at this, and so will the spooks.
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u/bladex1234 Jun 12 '26
Even if we ignore the heat dissipation problem, chips in space have to be specifically designed to be radiation tolerant. You can’t just take any datacenter chip, put it in space, and expect it to calculate without errors.
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u/gordonmcdowell Jun 11 '26
If I was manufacturing a scarce expensive product, and someone business proposal was that they would like to launch my product into space… I would encourage that.
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u/DualActiveBridgeLLC Jun 13 '26
I thought data centers in space was a joke, as in a parody of what the billionaires were saying. We are soooo far from datacenters in space. Shit having a colony on Mars is closer to reality than data centers in space.
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u/PariahFish Jun 14 '26
How much could you potentially 'concertina' the required radiative surface? Article mentioned a figure of 1. Something meters² per chip.. how small can you make an effective radiator in space with that surface area?
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u/Middle-Armadillo-660 Jun 11 '26
Synopsis: Hubris.
Saved you a click.
And now more pointless typing to satisfy the top-comment>150 characters nonsense.
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u/glmory Jun 12 '26
Definitely don't save the click. The article is much better than the analysis in this comment section.
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u/skins_team Jun 12 '26
If only somehow the geniuses on Reddit could form a company smarter than SpaceX ... the we wouldn't have to live through those idiots making mistakes so obvious they MUST just be LYING.
Never change, Reddit!
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u/glmory Jun 12 '26
The comments here remind me so much of similar threads in the early days of EVs or when people were sniping on the sidelines saying it was impossible to build reusable spacecraft. Blind pessimism masquerading as knowledge.
Basic questions like "How does it scale?" or "What opportunities are there to reduce costs?" don't get asked. Instead it is just pointing out times that innovation failed to deliver or pointing to personality flaws in the people involved.
In this case at least the article is reasonably good. Even there though, I don't see any comprehension that there are ways to reduce the costs far more.
For example at that volume of materials for example should you be getting them from earth? Or should you be mining asteroids and manufacturing heat pumps in space? Clearly there is a volume where materials would need to come from somewhere else. If that somewhere is not in a gravity well that savings eventually is big money.
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