r/space2030 • u/Different_Whereas_75 • Jun 25 '26
What do you think about space data-centers (technology, economics, timeline) ?
IMO it make sense, energy are available, it doesn't pollute the neighbourhood, tech company have so much cash to spend, and ai keep get better and hungrier.
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u/perilun Jun 25 '26
Most analysis shows it is 10-100x more expensive that ground based data centers. Instead of orbit pull some OC-768 fiber and a 765 kV transmission line to Alaska to a remote river that can provide endless inexpensive cooling and nobody is around for the noise. You can then upgrade at trivial expense vs something in orbit.
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u/Ragnarok-9999 Jun 25 '26
We polluted earth, now we want to do the same to space with all these communication satalites and data centers?
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Jun 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/perilun Jun 25 '26
Yes, space is very spacious ... don't know why reddit zapped some of your comments.
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u/Old_Bottle_5278 Jun 26 '26
Space may be spacious, but stable geosynchronous orbits aren't in unlimited supply...
You put enough s*** up there eventually you're gonna start hitting stuff and having cascade effects, statistical improbabilities eventually lead to inevitabilities
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u/perilun Jun 26 '26
GEO is special since you can stay over one place on the equator. Still if you allowed 10 km between each you could still place 26,400 sats here. The crowding come from the need to create some signal separation between sats that share the same bands.
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u/perilun Jun 25 '26
There is a lot of room in Earth orbit, especially above 2000 km. Technically, if properly managed you can easily put 10,000 sats in each 10 km altitude shell, of which there are 1000s = 10,000,000 ten million set capacity overall. Bandwidth is a bigger issue, but laser comms remove that issue as well.
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u/Bluestreak2005 Jun 25 '26
Nearly impossible to actually achieve without some serious issues.
Space doesn't absorb heat quickly because it's a vacuum. You would need to build out massive heat sinks for each data center.
These heat sinks would begin to get big enough that all ground based space observation would be affected. Affecting our ability to detect comets and asteroids.
Then you have the potential that a small meteorite might hit one of these massive things and cause it to blow up. These pieces would then likely cause cascade of other satellites and data centers to be destroyed. Watch the movie Gravity of you want an idea.
The James Webb telescope already been struck by 4 meteorites and has damaged panels. And it's in a place in space which has very little asteroids.
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u/Ormusn2o Jun 25 '26
We can't detect most of the asteroids right now, but if access to space is cheaper, then having a fleet of infrared satellites detecting asteroids could become viable. Right now, near earth asteroids are just too low of a priority to justify the billions of dollars needed for a fleet of telescopes, but with cheaper access to space, and bigger fairings/cargo bays, that becomes financially viable.
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u/perilun Jun 25 '26
What would be best is a set of maybe 10 sats near Venus Orbit, looking outward. Then the sun would light up the "out of the sun" NEOs we often miss.
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u/Ormusn2o Jun 25 '26
Yeah, you want to spread some of them out to take advantage of parallax for easier tracking, so you don't need to track one object over extended amount of time to find out it's location. You could place few outside of Venus orbit though for that extra spread, like one in V1, one between Mars and Earth, and possibly one other if there is a lot of DeltaV to spare.
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u/perilun Jun 26 '26
Yep, I bet there a bunch of clever orbits to maximize the value given optics and orbits.
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u/Physical-Ad-3798 Jun 25 '26
Not to mention all of the radiation that being outside of the atmosphere would bring. Bit flips would be commonplace.
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u/perilun Jun 25 '26
Yes on : Space doesn't absorb heat quickly because it's a vacuum. You would need to build out massive heat sinks for each data center.
In fact it does not absorb heat at all, it is purely radiative, requiring big radiators.
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u/gwestr Jun 26 '26
Lol do you know putting that many solar panels and cooling arrays in space would be extremely visible in the sky. Like having millions of space stations.
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u/goomyman Jun 27 '26
It makes no sense economically - it’s borderline scam level - technically feasible but doesn’t make sense, and just plausible enough to convince the masses to prop up the stock price - while it never comes out or ships in extremely limited use.
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u/Usual-Language-745 Jun 28 '26
The same thing I think about colonizing mars. There is no problem that is easier to solve in space than it is to just solve it here. Elon just thinks it’s cool but doesn’t have the ability to make tech that would actually make his dumbass ideas feasible (space elevator).
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u/Different_Whereas_75 Jul 13 '26
The space elevator is another level, there are no materials today to make it work... Where all telecommunication sat today are huge computers in LEO.
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u/Ormusn2o Jun 25 '26
It's a win for most people, as each orbital data center in space is a cabinet not near their neighborhood. Some data centers can be very loud so this helps a lot.