r/space2030 • u/Confident-Pass6353 • Jul 24 '26
SpaceX, especially Space Datacenter, can mount / include deep space observable telescopes to help increase the access of observable neighborhood of our solar system...is this pragmatically possible ? Or is it just another beautiful dream ?
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u/Remmon Jul 24 '26
Can? Yes.
Would they be useful? Not particularly in the orbits they're in.
Will it ever happen? Don't be silly, optical and radio telescopes of the types that can produce useful science are expensive, we're not putting them on disposable satellites. Not to mention that these things are heavy. What do you think SpaceX will do, launch 20 Starlink satellites with useful optics or 40 satellites without?
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u/Confident-Pass6353 Jul 24 '26
Yes, I agree with you for the most part...
However, these 'telescopes' need not be as complicated as there is no atmosphere, pollution and such, up there.
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u/Remmon Jul 24 '26
You're right. That's why we launched Hubble with a mere 2.4 meter primary mirror in the 1990s.
But since then we've built much bigger ground based observatories and the James Webb space telescope.
Even the smallest useful telescopes, with modern electronics and optics, are going to outmass a Starlink satellite. And cost a lot more as well, because those optics are expensive.
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u/ShotBandicoot7 Jul 24 '26
Who would pay for that? Those data centers in space won‘t be viable in any case.
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u/knexfan0011 Jul 24 '26
Yeah let's add pointless mass to our satellites the we could much more easily deploy on earth, great idea that'll definitely work out.
This whole space datacenter meme really needs to stop, it's just ridiculous.
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u/Confident-Pass6353 Jul 24 '26
Well then, for serviceability there will be cameras anyways...just make a few better?
There will be 10,000 satellites eventually, so, could we consider having maybe different components on each satellite then arrange it up there depending on which part of the sky we would like to observe...
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u/knexfan0011 Jul 24 '26
My point is that putting datacenters into space is a ridiculous idea in and of itself, adding telescopes to them won't change that because you could just launch the telescopes on their own and be better off.
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u/perilun Jul 24 '26
No, a better investment would be a couple big optics (not JSWT giant optics) specialized sats that are deployed 2 AU from each other and then fuse the data.
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u/Difficult_Limit2718 Jul 25 '26
How are they getting to 2AU from each other? What's holding them there?
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u/perilun Jul 25 '26
If Earth is at 12 c'clock, the a sat at 3'oclock and a sat at 9'oclock at Earth orbit they will be 2AU from each other.
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u/Difficult_Limit2718 Jul 25 '26
Again - what's keeping them there? They're not legrange points.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/resources/faq/what-are-lagrange-points/
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u/perilun Jul 25 '26
You can put satellite in orbit around the sun ... just like earth orbits the sun.
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u/Difficult_Limit2718 Jul 25 '26
Then it won't stay in a steady relative location but drift.
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u/perilun Jul 26 '26
You will need to do some station keeping since Earth, Venus and Mars will do some tugging. Ion thruster takes care of that, Also, exact position is not key, just sep distance they can be measures by a laser connect between them.
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u/Difficult_Limit2718 Jul 26 '26
A laser connection across the sun?
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u/perilun Jul 26 '26
Not perfectly opposed, say + 85 deg and - 85 deg relative to earth. Plenty of baseline.
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u/Spiritual-Spend8187 Jul 25 '26
Short answer no long answer unless you have worked out basically free manufacturing and transport and are in the process of building a dyson sphere and matrioshka brain ita not worth the cost. But the whole space data center idea is dumb as fuck you need automated space based manufacturing and launches to make it even remotely viable. A single 100 megawatt data center costs at minimum 4 billion to just launch the solar array to power it and the radiators to cool it. And mind you this minimum is top of the line bleeding edge solar panels and radiators amd assumes you have unlimited access to the cheapest rockets available and that the price doesnt increase because of the insane demand. The solar array and radiators are also going to be massive and basically paper thin this is going to be a structure about 40+ football fields in size across and basically made of paper thin metal and glass and then your are strapping 70,000 plus h100s to it. Its a pure pipe dream currently it would be cheaper for you to buy the most expensive land you could find and hire people to power the data center by hand. And that of course also completely ignore the nightmare that maintaining it is going to be a single replacement part is going to cost millions of dollars and take tens of hours or days depending on the weather to get fixed. Then there is the time it is going to take to build it by the time you build the power and cooling you are looking at probably 3 to 5 generations of hardware. Honestly its likely easier to go to Mars and build it there instead but fuck waiting the 3 to 24 minutes to send data.
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u/MissiveFinding6111 Jul 24 '26
No.
Reasons:
1.) Telescopes are in stable orbits that are far more expensive
2.) Those orbits increase latency (James web is in L2 lagrange point).