/sci/ — Data centers in space?

>>16995694 (OP)
think of all the launch money spacex would make tho

Free energy. Infinite cooling.

Where else are you going to build Skynet, but in the sky of course!

>>16995698
Only solar and bad cooling. And you have to put that shit in orbit. Why not get the solar energy on Earth and cool the stuff easier?

>>16995694 (OP)
You’d get them up there have free power and cooling.
SpaceX already has “data centers “ up there called starlink but they aren’t totally dedicated to it, 3v3 is pretty close
By 2028 Elon will be putting up micro data centers yes basically solar panels giant radiators using teen court sized tubes that glow off heat. You can dump heat through radiation btw
There you go

>>16995701
Radiative cooling.
We already do it. You’d need something the size of a tennis court and panels that size as well than a “server bus” data Center.
A single starship launch could put up a smaller one for 20 million
No problems with power or cooling or regulation

For true sentience for ai you’d need to put parts in space still the hardware to get close to a persons brain takes up miles on earth and it’s still not getting enough data. You need everything feeding into it. It’s like starting an engine it needs stimuli like fuel.

>>16995701
Solar energy on earth isn't 24/7 and cooling requires a lot of energy (upto 40% of a data centers energy usage) and generates a ton of waste heat. Space solves all those problems. You don't even have to worry about hardware replacements as most computing equipment becomes EOL after 5-10 years and ends up in the trash.

But like you say, the biggest hurdle is the cost of getting it all into orbit.

They will be eventually. Lot's of plans. Yeah obviously faster on earth but in Space they will be more efficient due to the conditions.

>>16995694 (OP)
It is retarded. No one is seriously proposing it.

>>16995707
Both cooling and energy are worse in space. You can get massively more energy out of the same amount of money in solar panels on earth than you do in space and cooling is significantly worse in space.

>>16995694 (OP)
data centers need to be cooled. using the vacuum as an infinite reservoir of liquid helium level coolant is genius.

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>>16995718
>cooling is significantly worse in space.

>>16995723
There's no convection in space so expelling heat only happens as radiation.

>>16995731
>satellites don't get cold in space because of no convection
you're irredeemably retarded

>>16995734
>satellites generate as much waste heat as a metal cube packed with GPUs running full bore
bot or troll

>>16995734
Most satellites aren't doing heavy data processing constantly, moron.

>>16995703
>Radiative cooling.
Literally the worst possible way to cool something.

>>16995738
the fact you're comparing them at all means you acknowledge space is cold and has a cooling effect
>>16995739
irrelevant.

>>16995742
It is entirely relevant.
Would you use radiative cooling to cool a space rifle?

>>16995743
cooling a space rifle is antithetical to how a space rifle is utilized. cold guns jam more

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>>16995744
uh oh, stinky~

>>16995698
KEK, imagine being this stupid. That's not how space works retard.
>>16995703
>Radiative cooling
Literally the most inefficient method of cooling and you are doing it in space.....so you are building the most inefficient cooling methods using the most inefficient logistics chain ever to do it. Literally retarded.
>>16995707
Solar panels in space will make less power or equal power to a sunny desert based solar panel on Earth. Due to radiant heating being so inefficient in space the space based panel will heat up to over 200F lowering it's efficiency to that of the desert panel which won't go above 140F. So any extra light you get cancels out because of heat and the space based panels degrade faster also due to heat build up, 24/7 heat build up too, no rest for the panel. Then like above you have the longest most expensive most complex logistics pipeline in human history to replace or repair the panels.

It's always always always going to be cheaper and more efficient to build data centers on the earth with short low tech logistics supply lines. It's the same reason reusable shopping bags are a scam. You need to reuse a shopping bag something like 2000 times to make it less pollution than just using disposable plastic bags and the reusable bag will last 10-100 trips to the store. My reusable bags always break after about 10-20 uses since I put heavy stuff in them, they rip, bag is trash and more energy and more plastic was wasted to make that reusable bag than it would take to make thousands of disposable bags. So counterintuitively reusable shopping bags are worse for the environment than disposable bags.

>>16995694 (OP)
It is retarded and the whole thing is just a bluff to pressure governments to drop regulations on constructing them on earth.
>if we can't drive up power costs on earth we'll kessler LEO

>>16995734
Satellite generates X BTUs of heat, space can cool the satellite at the rate of 2X BTUs. Satellite slowly cools to the background temp of space via radiative cooling. It's simple math, now watch with data centers.

GPU server farm in space generates 100X BTU in heat. Space can only cool 2X via radiative cooling, data center heats up at a rate of 98X until it melts. The only way to stop it from melting is to drastically scale up surface area of the entire system where the vast majority of the data center are cooling panels aka highly inefficient and again you are building an insanely inefficient system using the longest most expensive most complicated logistics supply chain in human history. You can't even send techs to repair the data center. You have to send literal astronauts who likely have no idea how to fix a fucking GPU. What is Elon going to do? Train a small army of space based service techs? Astronauts have unique physical characteristics that make it possible for them to survive the trip to space, in space and the trip home. Heavy G forces many humans can't take. That's why so many wash out of NASA, the mind is willing but the body unable. Also you need world class thinking skills to survive in space where anything can and will go wrong. Are we going to send retards with 12 months of trade school into orbit to turn wrenches on a data center?

I mean, seriously you retards are so stupid you don't even think through basic logistics issues with the bullshit you swallow. The logistics chain for the human techs working on the data centers alone is impossibly huge and you'd need a cutting edge space station 10 times larger than the ISS just to house say 10-20 techs and the support staff needed to keep them alive and the space station in orbit. It's a shit show wrapped in a shit sandwich.

>>16995758
>1X heating; 2X cooling
>100X heating; 2X cooling
sweetie, the rate of cooling actually increases depending on the heat. it's funny you shit on people for not thinking while not even recalling newton's law of cooling/

>>16995694 (OP)
Good idea. No NIMBYs to get in the way.

>>16995742
Being on earth has radiative cooling effect too. Of course if you just rely on radiative cooling your data center turns into slag in about 5 seconds.

>>16995761
As soon as those GPU's are hot enough to glow like the surface of the sun they may cool fast enough!

>>16995769
earth has an atmosphere. gpus will not reach millions of celsius lol

>>16995771
What does atmosphere matter, it's still radiating heat. And no GPU's won't reach millions of degrees because they will melt long before that and stop being GPU's

>>16995774
>what does a heat trapper that interferes with radiation have to do with radiation

>>16995780
>heat trapper
Air is only heat trapper compared to better conductors. Vacuum is even better heat trapper since it conducts no heat. Air does not "interfere" with radiation, that's not how radiation even works.

>>16995789
You're arguing with the person who think there are no thermal management problems for satellites >>16995734 and radiative cooling follows Newton's law >>16995761

>>16995694 (OP)
>The whole thing sounds retarded. Like if it wasnt 100 times easier put datacenters on Earth.

put ai datacenter in space. plebs cant burn it down.

>>16995921
What if 1,000,000 retards got mirrors and pointed them all at the same satellite, reflecting the sun? Troll laser cannon?

>>16995936
A crude FOD weapon would be far more effective and easier to accomplish.

Man I love reading sci threads and feeling really smart

>>16995694 (OP)
They could make solar sails and keep a satellite in an orbit long-term. Not as close as Starlink, but at least we're not burning them every 4 years.

Yes buy SpaceX IPO, if not for the short term. They eventually goto Mars, so that's 30+ years long term.

>>16995951
Ok, let's upgrade. 1km wide focusable fresnel lense array, aimed by computer, delivering intense EM radiation at orbit, and a convenient side effect where it sometimes rains air fried birds. Plus, it's mostly green.

>>16995694 (OP)
because of AI terrorists

>>16995761

Weather satellites and space-based AI server farms have completely different cooling needs due to the staggering difference in the amount of heat they generate. While a weather satellite needs to keep delicate cameras cold using minimal power, an AI server farm would produce an overwhelming mountain of heat that space physics cannot easily escape.

Here is how their cooling needs compare and contrast.The Power and Heat Profile

Weather Satellites: These operate on low power, typically drawing between 1,000 to 5,000 watts for the entire spacecraft. Their main cooling goal is keeping sensitive infrared imaging sensors extremely cold often below -150C so heat doesn't blur their pictures of Earth.

XAI Server Farms: A single modern AI rack can pull 100,000 watts, and a full farm requires megawatts or gigawatts of power. They generate massive, concentrated heat that must be moved away constantly to keep the processors from melting.

Cooling Mechanisms
Weather Satellites: They rely on small, passive louvers and heat pipes to dump a tiny amount of heat into space. For their ultra-cold cameras, they use small mechanical coolers called cryocoolers.
XAI Server Farms: They cannot rely on passive metal loops. They require complex, active liquid-loop cooling networks to grab heat from the chips, pumped into giant, unfolding fluid-filled radiator panels spanning kilometers.

A weather satellite works because its heat output is tiny enough for a small radiator to handle. An AI server farm scales the heat problem up by a factor of a million. Because space is an insulator, shedding megawatts of heat requires an impossible amount of radiator surface area, making the AI farm's cooling hardware vastly heavier than the actual computers.

>>16995761

>>16996117
To cool a modest 1-megawatt (MW) space AI data farm operating at standard chip temperatures (around 60°C), you would need an enormous radiator surface area of roughly 1,250 square meters. This is roughly the size of three basketball courts combined, just to cool a single data center rack.

In space, radiators face a brutal double-whammy from the Sun that severely degrades their performance:

Thermal Choking: The Sun hits objects near Earth with a relentless 1,361 watts per square meter of solar energy. Even the best space-grade white paints absorb about 20% of this light. This extra solar heat actively fights against the radiator, choking its ability to dump the AI farm's waste heat.

The Scale Explosion: Without solar interference, a double-sided space radiator can emit about 1,070 watts per square meter. Once you factor in absorbed sunlight, the net cooling efficiency drops to just 798 watts per square meter. This forces engineers to increase the radiator's size and weight by nearly 35% just to compensate for the Sun.

Orbits Add Reflection: If the data farm orbits Earth (LEO), the problem worsens. The radiator absorbs albedo (sunlight bouncing off Earth's clouds) and infrared heat emitted by the planet itself

To keep the panels from absorbing sunlight, they must constantly rotate to stay edge-on to the Sun. However, this requires heavy tracking motors, structural joints, and complex plumbing to pump hot liquid through moving parts—creating massive points of failure for a system that can never stop running

>>16996119
Launch weight and cost of the AI data center:

GPUs & Compute Racks: ~12,000 kg | ~$40 million. Runs ~1,000 high-end AI chips (like NVIDIA H100s at ~700W each) plus server chassis, motherboards, switches, and radiation shielding.

Radiator Array: ~6,000 kg | ~$15 million. Covers ~1,250 m2 of dual-sided carbon-composite deployable panels.

Coolant & Plumbing: ~2,500 kg | ~$5 million. High-capacity fluids (like water-glycol or dielectric oil) and titanium micro-channel piping to route the heat.

Solar Panels & Batteries: ~24,000 kg | ~$50 million. Massive arrays must capture enough power to run the 1-MW compute load plus extra to charge heavy batteries for orbital eclipse periods

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>>16996123
The Solar Panel Thermal Catch-22Adding solar panels to power the data farm directly breaks the cooling architecture via a brutal thermal feedback loop:

Massive Solar Heat Catchers: Solar panels are highly efficient blackbody absorbers but terribly inefficient electricity converters (only ~30% efficiency). To generate 1.4 MW of raw power (needed for a 1-MW compute load plus battery margins), the panels will absorb nearly 3.5 MW of pure solar heat.

Radiation Reflection (Albedo): These massive hot wings sit right next to the server farm. Because they get incredibly hot, they constantly bleed infrared thermal radiation right back onto the data center's own cooling radiators.

The Size Explosion: This extra structural heat drastically lowers the radiator's temperature differential against deep space. To drop the same amount of GPU heat, your radiator panels must grow significantly larger and heavier, killing rocket payload margins.

>>16995694 (OP)
At first glance it does seem retarded until you learn the scale at which AI companies are attempting to build. It is destined for extreme resistance and political backlash that will make nuclear power plant NIMBYism look minor by comparison. There is also no permitting, land taxes, water bill or electric bill. You just launch it.

What about datacenters underwater for better cooling?

>>16996394
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Natick

Microsoft trialed that several years ago. It worked but it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. I guess because land based solutions are still the easiest.

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>>16995742
>irrelevant.
Imagine being this much of a larper.

>>16996394
>>16996403
It's apparently been commercialized in China as of last week https://english.shanghai.gov.cn/en-Latest-WhatsNew/20260601/89a94ac072f842eeacf82fcf0cce8261.html

>>16996428
Imagine fartin

>>16996428
Imagine my balls in your mouth

>>16997436
Na. You're not seeing teetae

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>no it's impossible to dissipate heat into space
We have radiators
>no it's impossible to move the heat from the chips to the radiators
We have liquids and pumps
>no it's impossible for the radiators to get hot enough to dissipate the heat
It's why we have heat pumps and compressors who can concentrate heat from low level sources
>no that's impossible
on whos authority seriously?
Why are we pretending cooling in space is a fundamental physics problem as opposed to an engineering one?
Or can people just not put together different concepts beyond like 2 pieces?

>>16997603
It's a combination of physics and engineering. You are limited to dumping heat into large sinks, which also need boosting to orbit. You can definitely solve this but the benefits better outweigh the costs and disadvantages of this shit being in space and not really easily accessible.

>>16997606
It's purely engineering.
It's not like one understands the things necessary to cool GPUs in space. All the blocks are there. Even the layman can extrapolate the processes needed to move heat.

The problem SpaceX has is one of tradeoffs and complexity and only them really can determine what's possible. If a multi stage cooling solution proves necessary then they will likely make something to do it. You can't in good faith say it's impossible or very very unlikely.

>>16997619
No one is saying it literally can't be done, it's just stupid and will not be done. Just like someone can theoretically walk on their hands from Cape town to Magadan singing Elvis songs as they go doesn't mean anyone ever has or ever will do it.

>>16995694 (OP)
nimby
free 24/7 energy

>>16997660
>it's just stupid and will not be done
As long as the pressure continues on building datacenters on earth the more merit orbital ones have.

>>16997691
That's again only conceptually true statement, just like me saying to my mate that he should attempt the hand stand challenge. Just because there's a theoretical increase in attractiveness of a given option does not make the option good or realistic in any given scale or realistic time window.

People here are acting like there are no regulatory barriers to building in space, but the FCC would almost certainly block deployment at VLEO, so the latency would be fucking terrible.
Getting enough bandwidth to match terrestrial datacenters would also be extremely nontrivial.