Orbital data centers do not defy the laws of physics. TBD whether they are economical relative to terrestrial data centers, but please don't succumb to misinformation.
All of that plumbing, all of that area, all that stuff to put in orbit just to cool one rack of compute equipment.
How much stuff do we need to put up there for each rack? The External Active Thermal Control System on the ISS is ~20,000lbs, about 10 tons. How many racks are in a single datacenter? The Colossus is allegedly ~1,500 compute racks, ignoring other equipment. So that's like 15,000 tons for just the cooling equipment if its like the ISS. At SpaceX's current public launch costs (which makes a profit for them, so not base costs) to launch that much stuff is somewhere around $40B. Just the launch cost for the cooling equipment alone for just one datacenter building worth of pure compute capacity, that isn't even that big compared to what companies are talking about building.
All of that is very rough back of the napkin math. I don't expect that to be the actual numbers at all, but I'd imagine somewhere in that neighborhood unless they've got something really radical up their sleeve.
They better have a much better way to cool these things than what the ISS is doing.
That's ~13 tons per megawatt, or 1,330 tons for 100 MWs. That's 13 launches of Starship (at $10 million per launch, or $130 million). Of course, that's probably 600 individual satellites, at maybe $5 million per, so we're at ~$3 billion to deploy 100 MW to space.
You can sell 100 MW of compute for $3-4 billion per year, so SpaceX would make their money back in 1 year.
Anyone can make a website. Let's see them actually make it and put it in orbit.
According to another Musk website we'd be riding hyperloops and drive through solo tunnels under our cities and we'd all own our own autonomous cab companies back in 2016.
Another website said we'd be able to buy a Cybertruck for $40k and the three-motor variety for $70k.
That's actually a reasonable prediction.
Did the Cybertruck have 500mi of range? Was there a $40k model at launch?
I don't know if orbital datacenters will work out--it depends on the price of launch and the price of tokens in 2030. Maybe they'll try it and abandon it. We'll see.
But my point is that if it does work, if they can be cheaper than terrestrial tokens, then SpaceX can dominate the market because no one else is even close to being able to deploy orbital compute.
And if it doesn't work, SpaceX will be fine because they are printing money with Starlink.
Cybertruck is a good example--they never hit their sales targets, but Tesla is fine because they are making money on Model Y and they are investing in Robotaxi (which has a bigger potential than Cybertruck anyway). And if Robotaxi doesn't work out, they will pivot to a cheaper model or something.
SpaceX will be fine, not because orbital datacenters are guaranteed, but because they keep betting on things that may or may not work, but if they do work, they make a ton of money.
Let's just trust him this time guys, he's definitely going to nail it.
He's definitely super successful and not a complete conman.
Then again, he's kinda a conman because he's promised absolutely absurd things that haven't happened.
He's a complicated character, 13 years ago I thought he was great, and now I mostly think he's a douchebag. insert complicated shrug emoji.
Tesla - Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning
SpaceX - Tom Mueller
PayPal - Max Levchin
Musk is a spoiled nepo-baby with rich parents and daddy issues who bought his way to success. His only skill is spewing attractive lies, and he does that quite well. In everything else he is - at best - mediocre.
And that’s just the most basic things, before taking in account ALL the other problems you face doing compute in space someone with expertise in the domain could mention.
Datacenters in space is a grift that won’t happen in any meaningful capacity and can be debunked by a 15y old who followed their physics courses
1. Radiating heat needs large radiators 2. Bit flips require extra compute capacity
Neither of those violate the laws of physics. As I said, they may not work economically, but that depends on a large number of unknowns, including the cost per ton to orbit and the cost per GW of new power capacity on Earth in 2030. If you have a time machine and know those numbers, then can I please borrow your time machine?
Moreover, when you say, "ALL the other problems ... someone with expertise in the domain could mention," you're saying either:
A) SpaceX engineers do not have expertise in this domain. B) SpaceX engineers are hiding all the problems that they know about.
B is basically a conspiracy theory. It is one YouTube video away from saying the moon landing was a hoax.
A is just delusional.
You're missing C) SpaceX engineers know it's a bad idea, but can't say anything because it's the tyrant manchild's latest obsession, technology constraints be damned.
Remember the vision-only FSD? How's that coming along?
Imho, there's only one reason that justifies Musk's space-based compute obsession: sovereignty.
Specifically, avoiding terrestrial country's.
This isn't about AI in space (though I'm sure dumb investors love that), it's about uncensorable Twitter in space, beamed down to Starlink terminals.
Which would be one of the few things you'd care about, if you were one of the richest people on the planet... but still subject to those damned nations and their meddling laws.
Unless he's offering it to the aliens orbiting his magical lawless space data centers.
Short of countrywide ku-band jamming and/or drone-based RDF at scale, what's the country going to do?
It was one thing when you needed a C-band dish to receive, but much harder to deal with a 1-2 ft dish.
The only nations who would realistically have that as an option would have a robust scaled ASAT capability (maybe US and China) but no pLEO satellites (rules out US and China).
However, based on the rapid development of high-powered lasers, I think we're not too far from it being very cheap. Mostly an optics (adaptive and aperture) problem.
This also means it's likely to get deniable very quickly.
I suspect that simply blocking payments from locals to Musk may be enough, considering how Musk reacted when advertisers voted with their wallets to leave X.
But nations have other tools, as Brazil showed when a judge ordered a freeze on Starlink assets because X didn't have reachable assets within Brazil to be frozen.
C) SpaceX engineers enjoy their cushy salary funded by a guy who won't take "that doesn't make sense" for an answer to work on rockets and neat technology, even if it may never really work out.
Starlink satellites use probably less than 1/100th the power budget of even these earlier supposed plans. They don't use much power at all in comparison. They're also big flat pancake for their body, as they want to have a good bit of area for their antenna array. So the other side can just focus on cooling very close to the actual compute parts. It's a radically different set of engineering requirements.
For something line the AI1, you're looking at a few million in launch costs for the mass of the cooling system alone and that's assuming they get Starship flying around their projected costs. What's the install cost per rack or cooling equipment on the ground? Even say I'm overshooting it 100%, those numbers still don't sound very good!
Alphabet researchers have estimated future launch costs based on learning curves; they estimate that after Starship has launched 370,000 tons to LEO, they will have figured out how to reduce launch costs by enough to make space data centres viable.
They optimistically suggested this might take ten years.
Given the rate of development of Starship as a launch system, I suspect that Musk will reach federal pension age before this is viable.