[Jabbles]

If any company can put profitable data centers in space, it will be SpaceX. But I doubt that any company can. The difficulties of the physics and engineering of cooling seem like they will always outweigh the advantages of keeping your data center on Earth.

I am annoyed by the insistence that the value of this company comes from something that no one has been able to show is possible yet without multiplying it by the obvious risk factor. And they seem to have got other companies like Alphabet[1] and Anthropic to publicize the idea, to give it more credibility.

I do not want my pension to automatically buy shares at $1T, but it looks like it will have no choice.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/science/google-spacex-talks-explore-...

[2] https://spacenews.com/anthropic-to-consider-using-spacex-orb...

[stanislavb]

This: "I do not want my pension to automatically buy shares at $1T, but it looks like it will have no choice."

They know the game very well. They know that if they manage to pump up the valuation high enough - they will be automatic money flowing in - regardless of actual valuations.

[yibg]

The unit economics of orbital DC just doesn't work with today's technology. Assuming 0 ongoing OpEx(free energy), the launch cost of the satellite itself, along with solar panels, radiators as well as the chip themselves just doesn't make sense given the ~5 year operational lifespan of both the chips and the satellites.

[dzhiurgis]

Chips yea, but sats can last much longer. Chips are relatively lightweight, so replacing them in a new mission absolutely makes sense.

[yibg]

LEO satellite orbits decay. e.g. starlink sats are ~5 year lifespan. But assuming a higher, more stable orbit, how do you replace them? There will be tens of thousands of these orbital DCs, so not really feasible to go to each one to replace some chips.

Or alternatively I guess a few massive ones, but those would need to be truly massive to accommodate the solar panels and radiator fins required.

[dzhiurgis]

We already re-supply ISS. IDK how much of it can be done autonomously, but no doubt we'll do hella lot more in future if space economy grows.

For orbits, those can and will be raised if it makes economical sense.

[yibg]

We re-supply a single ISS. If all of this compute is in a single DC the solar panels and radiator fins will be the size of a small state.

[throwaway85825]

Space data centers are a bad idea. Every DC has a non zero number of employees that do maintenance. Going from 99% to 99.9repeating% reliability is extremely expensive. That's why satellites cost billions and take 10 years to build.

[electriclove]

Wouldn't your pension be buying shares at $2T?

[fragmede]

How do you price regulatory restrictions? The laws governing space are more lax than those governing how much chromium Tesla can dump into their waste water. By building in space, they get to completely sidestep any regulatory issues on Earth, like not being allowed to build what they want, wherever they want, how they want. It's annoying getting permits to do whatever on my house, but for businesses, it's a real problem.

[darkwizard42]

The biggest regulation of building in space is... where do the debris go. You are tightly monitored for how much trash reenters into the atmosphere, so there is still SOME level of regulation.

[electriclove]

SpaceX is doing the monitoring and is making their system available to others for free: https://starlink.com/updates/stargaze

[ble]

There are safety regulations that require things roughly like, "to prevent harm to planes in the air and people on the ground, either control where your satellite re-enters so or make your satellite entirely out of components that are almost certain to burn up on re-entry".

As far as I can tell, there is no environmental regulation of how many kilograms of aluminum, silicon, etc. being added to the Earth's atmosphere when a Starlink burns up during re-entry.

cf. https://www.supercluster.com/editorial/forty-year-old-loopho... https://aas.org/about/governance/society-resolutions/atmosph...

[nickburns]

You know 'space' is a vacuum, right?

[roer]

I don't see how that would lessen their concerns? Exactly because space is a vacuum, cooling is harder since you can't do convection.

The math still checks out though. Scott Manley did a video on it, and the top comment has some corrections: https://youtu.be/FlQYU3m1e80

[nickburns]

[flagged]

[tomhow]

Please don't post snarky dismissals on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[roer]

Scott Manley is a much more respected source than I am

[dzhiurgis]

30% of terrestrial datacenter power use is cooling. Space cooling is easier!

[dgellow]

What makes cooling easier in space? Isn’t it harder due to the lack of atmosphere?

[dzhiurgis]

Just need radiators, no fans, no piping, no ac compressors, no moving parts.

[dgellow]

How? There is no heat dissipation without an atmosphere. I mean, you have dissipation via radiation but that’s very slow

[nickburns]

But, but—convection!

[stainablesteel]

elon has a great wall of china's worth of plaques with comments exactly like this, and his companies are still worth more than their combined weight in gold