Wouldn't it be cheaper to out it underground?
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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In either case the installation cost and infrastructure costs are excessive and the I/o is probably limited
Ridiculous, you can't have cloud computing in space, there's no atmosphere!
Considering the ludicrous price to put each pound of equipment into orbit, I'd like to invite them to send as much hardware as they can in to (high) geostationary orbit so they can find out how well a vacuum does NOT promote radiating heat
Edit: also forgot about solar radiation flipping bits. I love the idea of them having to reboot the machine (if they even can) remotely once ever 15 minutes
cause of ping?
No, that works well with Starlink for example. But only because it's in low earth orbit. In geostationary orbit You do in fact have a horrible ping.
Not being familiar with the details of this Elon brain fart I would hope they didn't aim for geostationary... Because why?? Then again who knows with that idiot.
alr ty
If it's close enough for respectable latency, it's close enough to experience drag. Given the maddeningly high power/cooling and resultant large surface area, then that satellite will have a tendency to incur re-entry.
So either close enough for "ok" latency but will burn up relatively soon or high enough to keep an orbit longer but terrible latency.
Hmm. Assuming you have some small hydrazine or whatever booster you could maintain a low orbit for a while. But yes not endlessly. That bring said there is a middle ground between 400km and 34000km that might provide for a good orbit and acceptable ping. That all depends on the application of course.
I don't think the point is to really build datacenters in space. The point is to convince investors that it can be done in a profitable manner so some people can create a fake businesses out of it and siphon money off the system. Much like the same as trying to convince investors that LLM + more money = AGI
I also wonder if this is an entire red herring. There are increasing reasons for more compute in space, such as to pre-filter sensor data.
Is it to naive/optimistic to think no one is actually looking for a space datacenter to compute terrestrial loads, but they recognize the need for processing space loads?
See now you all are thinking.
The rich wouldn’t tell us this shit if it wasn’t going to be used as some spin/distraction whatever it is.
It's a legal thing. No (real) jurisdiction. In space nobody will shut down Grok generating kiddo porn. It's basically the precursor for Epstein Island 2.0.
Mr Musk has to justify that 1.75t valuation somehow
I love how his rationale is that manufacturers of natural gas generator parts are backordered o 2030, so instead of... I don't know, spinning up more natural gas hardware or terrestial power generation, the easiest solution is to go from 11 attempts/0 successful launches of a space platform to tens of thousands of launches a year carrying unprecedented mass of bullshit into orbit...
Don’t data-centers require massive cooling?
Yes, and it's easier to cool things on earth. In space, there's no air to help you cool thinks off, you can only reject heat through radiation. Most spacecraft are carefully designed to reflect heat/light on surfaces facing the sun and radiate heat into empty space from surfaces that are shaded.
In space there’s no epa
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