I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about using satellites for data processing lately. The benefit is better energy generation as I have understood it. But isn’t there a problem in that satelites are bad at expelling excess heat, since they can only do so passively?
What they don’t show in a lot of SciFi is the mundane day-to-day stuff (AFAIK, the only shows that came close were Red Dwarf and Firefly.)
Problem is, things break. Connectors come loose. Temperature makes things brittle. Small debris cross pads and create shorts. Most automated manufacturing lines can catch assembly problems, but none have 0% failure rate. This is what post-deployment maintenance is for. Somebody shows up in a van with a bunch of test gear and replacement parts. They diagnose the problem, swap out a cable or board, and the business keeps humming.
Add IoT and fancy telemetry. Monitor sensors and run ML to do predictive analytics. It still requires someone in a cargo van with a bunch of spare parts.
If you put an installation in a remote location, under water, or in space, there are benefits. But you just multiplied the cost of basic maintenance. You can build in redundancies, but a small glitch at a single-point-of-failure could cascade to a catastrophe.
Microsoft and Google tried putting data-centers under water, and after years of trials they nixed it because of these issues. Multiply that for something far out in space.
Only alternative is to build failure into the business model. Something breaks, you just leave it to rot (or burn in the atmosphere) and send another container out. Maybe the finance math works out, but it sure is wasteful.
tl:dr: SciFi is fantasy. A clogged toilet is reality.
Don’t disagree with your main point at all, just want to throw The Expanse into your list for shows that do a good job of showing things just break and it’s catastrophic when they do it in space.
Oh right. I already forgot about the underwater data centre hype. Data centre in space would face much of the same challenges so the concept has basically already been tried and failed.
Can any kind strangers here share some reads (or anything) on heat dissipation in space? My understanding is that there is virtually no medium to carry away all that energy, but I remember reading something about satellite and space stations actually cool off and there being some sort of a solution to heat. I just wanna learn more.
this website covers heat and cold pretty well in my opinion: https://www.jameswebbdiscovery.com/satellite-technology/heat-management-in-satellites-techniques-for-dissipating-heat-in-space
since radiating heat is the only real way of getting rid of heat, the main solutions are limited size and power combined with insulation. quite opposite to what datacenters do.
Nice article, thanks!
ELI5 version: You know how things glow red when heated up? That takes energy, or, more precisely, that converts heat energy to light. And you know how the color changes the hotter it is? Even before its starts to glow red it actually still glows, pretty much everything does, we just dont see it because it falls outside of visible spectrum, but thermal cameras can and that’s how they work. So, for space question, just take a big plate, and unlike solar panels, point it perpendicular to the sunlight. Run some coolant through it and you’ve got a space chiller. If you look at i.e. ISS photos you’ll see big solar arays at the sides and smaller jagged square panels protruding off the middle and some off the sides, those are exactly it, the so-called “heat rejection units”. Actually while double checking myself I was surprised to learn that they do not run a thermal pump between radiators and everything else, I always thought they did as hotter objects dissipate more energy, but apparently shipping more radiators to orbit was a better tradeoff than constantly wasting energy pumping the heat away.
Yes because it’s a bubble, none of them make real money so it’s a waste to actually build them, but you have to fake it to scam investors. On earth the investors will look at land purchases and permits and power contracts and construction, so you have to spend millions of dollars to fake it. You can trade stock back and forth with Nvidia and “order” infinite chips that will never exist but you can’t do that for electricians.
In space you just have to already own a vanity project rocket company. You fill out a form with the FCC and get a theoretical permit to launch “up to” 100 quadrillion datacenters into space, and then just point to a windowless factory that might theoretically have the capacity to make datacenter satellites but you can’t let them see inside because you have classified defense contracts. Who knows might be a trillion dollars in shareholder value in there, you can’t prove there isn’t.
No, they are not. Putting a data center in space is a completely ridiculous idea. You can probably build and run hundreds of data centers on earth for the price of one in orbit.
I’d really like to know who put this utter nonsense idea in circulation. Wouldn’t be surprized if it was Elons idea…
Data processing in space can be useful, albeit not in the way that Musk seems to sell it. I spoke with some people from a space startup (edgx) at a jobfair in Belgium half a year ago.
Their thing was that they did some data processing in space to cut down on bandwidth (so this is specifically for applications where satellites are a necessary component). I also remember specifically asking them about cosmic rays and they told me it’s definitely manageable because their computers fly in LEO. (They already have a computer in space)
Methinks the reason techbros want to put compute in space is to have it physically away from people. Normal data centers are right there to be smashed and torched in the event of widespread societal unrest. In space, it’s unreachable.
if they want to spend billions mroe to just send 1 datacenter, they are free to do so.
They shouldn’t be.
Space, especially LEO, is cluttered with way the hell too much garbage already.
Nobody should be allowed to put garbage up there for no benefit beyond CEO pocket lining.
Every single space mission should be carefully considered as a resource usage. Every object left behind in orbit should be scrutinized ten times as closely.
In space, it’s unreachable.
To normal people, yes. But it’s perfectly reachable for any small country military. And the orbits people are talking about can be easily intercepted from any place outside of the poles.
It’s an idea used to justify merging xAI (burning through cash) and SpaceX (more profitable*). It’s not remotely practical due to heat dissipation, general complexity, additional cost, and complete inability to service broken components.
i prefer that we create giant mecha robots that then forever juggle data-centers always twirling, twirling, twirling them towards profitability.
Nah, man. I have an issue with your wording. You have not been “hearing a lot of talk”. You are quoting one specific lie of a prolific grifter.
Nobody in their right mind agrees with this. If you had put your question as “Elon Musk, owner of a satellite launching company, as well as several money burning pits, wants others to pay him to put some of those money burners into orbit. Is there any sense to this?”, the answer would be trivial.
I found several companies planning on launching data centers into orbit.
Blue Origin, Orbital, Aetherflux, and Starcloud.
only one of those even has a launch platform
And that matters … how?
Because “planning to” in this case is practically code for “grifting their investors with fairytales”, especially with these people. The self-driving car, the underground tunnel that would replace motorways, the chatbot that would replace people, the Mars colony, these are all lies no matter if it’s Musk saying them or anyone else trying to get some of the same easy money.
That’s not the point. I agree space data centers are dumb. The point is it’s not as impossible sounding to many people as you make it out to be.
Woosh
It has come up in talks with a friend of mine, I have read an independent article on it and I have also read Musk wants to do it. That is my experience with the topic. I think it’s patronizing that you tell me how I should phrase my question.
Of course you would. But I also don’t quite believe you. Everybody lies on the internet, and when I see corporate PR being regurgitated by someone pretending to be “just one of us”, indignant when confronted, expecting the benefit of the doubt, I call it out.
Well just the other day I was doing my regular human activities with my biological friend Frobert, and just between consuming two Earth crustaceans, we came to talk about the benefits of alchemy to transmute people into gold. We’ve got the idea from Grok.
It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re an actual shill or someone genuinely uninformed whose talking points reflect whatever a shill would say. If you give me the Musk fan impression, I’m gonna give you the Musk fan treatment. Call me patronising if you want 🤷.
Yeah, you’re being an ass.
The amount of energy required to send a human up there for maintenance is, literally, astronomical. Can a datacenter run at a profit with zero humans and up in space? Your guess is as good as mind.
No <3
My understanding is that computers in space need to have redundancies in the hardware design because bit flips are a lot more common. Radiation and whatnot. Regardless, you can’t just shove some parts in a case and expect it to work. At least not for very long.
No, it’s a stupid idea through and through.
its expensive, like how they suggested the ocean as well.
No
