[devops000]

“If we fail to deliver access to the committed amount of GPUs by September 30, 2026, then following a one-month grace period, Google may immediately terminate the agreement or accept the number of GPUs provided, with a corresponding pro rata reduction in the monthly fees. After December 31, 2026, the agreement may be terminated by either party upon 90 days' notice.”

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026...

It’s only to boost the IPO price. The agreement will last only a few months on paper. I doubt it is a real transaction.

[fauigerzigerk]

Either that or SpaceX is permanently turning xAI's assets into a neocloud because xAI itself has no traction.

The whole thing looks rather desperate. I wonder what SpaceX's margins are on these contracts.

[ACCount37]

SpaceX has recently started pitching itself as an orbital datacenter company.

If you buy into that business model (or pretend to), it makes sense for SpaceX to start selling compute early. Their "earthside compute" clients of today are "skyside compute" clients of tomorrow.

A part of Musk's old pitch for Starlink was: space-based solar makes perfect sense for powering space assets, and no sense whatsoever for powering Earth assets. So you have to find a way to use that power in space to do something economically useful. Comms were the only scalable way to do that, so Starlink it was.

I can see how space-based datacenters would follow the same logic. If SpaceX can make them economical, that is. There's no guarantees of that - but if anyone at all can make space-based datacenters economical, it's SpaceX.

[formerly_proven]

When I hear space I think "that's the perfect location for a data center", since data centers are lightweight, small, require little power, don't need human intervention, have lifetimes measured in decades and don't have to reject heat. Since space easily satisfies these requirements, space is an ideal deployment location for data centers.

[readthenotes1]

This may be one of the rare instances where the sarcasm is obvious without using the sarcasm font

[bonsai_spool]

Yeah... What am I missing? Like why isn't this just laughed at when it's proposed?

[jordanb]

I felt the same way about the "tube with an air hockey table in it." But here I am fifteen years later eating crow as I take the hyperloop to Vegas.

[debugnik]

Isn't the Vegas Loop just a car tunnel? As far as I know, there aren't any actual hyperloops[1] involved, just a narrow highway, even if they deceivingly brand it "Loop".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop

[fc417fc802]

It seems off at first glance but actually appears to work out if you do the math. You can model a solar panel as a flat, opaque rectangle. You can calculate power generation and equilibrium temperature for it based on surface area. If you require additional radiative surface area to achieve the desired equilibrium temperature you can place a flat triangle orthogonal to and behind the solar panel in its shadow.

Compute is "free" at that point because waste heat is coming out of the total energy flux which was already accounted for (because we modeled it as opaque).

Of course swapping out the equipment poses a bit of a challenge. The "helping hands" rate is entirely unaffordable and wait until you see this new DC's physical access policies. 0/10 would not rack with them again.

[krupan]

You forgot that standard computers are also not sensitive to radiation

[happosai]

> if anyone at all can make space-based datacenters economical, it's SpaceX

Let's hope burning ten thousand tons of toxic e-waste annually in upper atmoshphere never becomes economical. Or mankind gets to senses and bans externalizing your e-waste problem by burning in atmosphere...

[simoncion]

> ...burning ten thousand tons of toxic e-waste annually...

Expressing water usage in gallons makes it seem really large, too. NASA says[0]:

  Scientists estimate that about 48.5 tons (44 tonnes or 44,000 kilograms) of meteoritic material falls on Earth each day.

If we assume that they're all the heavier v2 units, the total mass of the orbital portion of Starlink is ten point four tons. [1] If we assumed that they lasted one year (instead of the five that they're reported to last[1]), then over the course of a year, Starlink would dump six hours worth of asteroid collisions into the atmosphere.

I think we'll be fine. Pour all that frustrated energy you have into substantially reducing the amount of incredibly hazardous d-waste [3] big commercial operators burn up into our atmosphere, instead.

[0] <https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/#h-...>

[1] According to [2] there are currently 10,413 satellites. At an assumed 1760 lbs each, this works out to roughly 10.4 tons.

[2] <https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html>

[3] "dino"-waste, AKA CO2

[jaycroft]

I think you missed a factor of 1000 somewhere in there: Each satellite weighs about 1 ton, there are about 10,000 of them. That is 10,000 tons in orbit for the constellation, not 10. Assuming a 5 year decay, that's 10000/5/365 ~= 5 tons / day. Still about 10% of the natural incoming material, but considerably more than your "six hours worth per year".

[simoncion]

> I think you missed a factor of 1000 somewhere in there... there are about 10,000 of them. That is 10,000 tons in orbit for the constellation, not 10.

I did. what. the. hell? Maybe my swiss-cheese brain read the "," in 10,413 as a decimal separator? I guess that's what I get for posting while old. Thanks for the correction and supporting arithmetic.

Though, I still stand by my "please for the love of everything, get to complaining about CO2 because this thing you're complaining about is a damn nothingburger" conclusion. (I am sufficiently aware to notice that that you're not OP, so the "you" in that pseudoquote is not directed at you.)

[happosai]

a) Meteorites don't have any of toxic chemicals used to build a server with lithium-ion batteries and solar panels

b) we could use the same argument to defend dumping spent nuclear fuel to oceans (like we used to do)

c) I agree with the CO2 issue, grok/spacex/xAI and others should be banned from building gas powered datacenters.

[simoncion]

> Meteorites don't have any of toxic chemicals used to build a server with ... solar panels

Right. The toxic chemicals found in solar panels known as silicon, aluminum, copper, and trace amounts of lead. These chemicals are only found in fuming Earthbound laboratories, and are nowhere else in the universe.

[polski-g]

You think that meteors don't have lithium? The third most common atom in the universe?

[nutjob2]

Space-based datacenters simply won't work. That people are talking about them shows Musk is the greatest snake oil salesman the world has ever seen.

[rpdillon]

Can anyone explain how the thermals will work? One of the biggest challenges on Earth is cooling the data center, and it's at least as challenging in space.

[fc417fc802]

The earthbound equivalent would be strapping each chassis to the back of a dedicated solar panel and having the panel double as a giant heat sink. The problem is that doesn't work on the surface due to (at least) rain, the day/night cycle, and the cost of real estate.

[protimewaster]

Isn't a solar panel going to be a poor heatsink, though? It's flat, and thus has relatively small surface area compared to its size.

[marcosdumay]

That's not right. This works a couple orders of magnitude better on the ground than on space (unless your computers run at several hundred °C).

The reason people don't do it here is because it's too expensive.

[wuschel]

Thermals are one among many really big challenges that require costly solutions.

[dgellow]

It won’t. It’s not supposed to work, it’s a mirage to raise dumb money. It’s way, way more challenging to cool something a vacuum. The only option is radiative cooling, which is far from being performant. The idea is as realistic as Musk previous grifts such as his digging company and there hyperloop, both absurd and supposed to revolutionize transport, both created as grifting devices and ensure public transport doesn’t develop in the US

[criddell]

> Space-based datacenters simply won't work.

Everybody knows.

Musk is a snake oil salesman (that’s been clear since the self-driving car promises) but he also has made a lot of people a lot of money and that’s all anybody really cares about.

None of his companies have a traditionally reasonable valuation. Is there any reason to think that’s going to change soon?

[saimiam]

> won’t work

A datacenter (earthbound or space) itself is a fantastical idea until a mix of events and inventions made it feasible to build them to sell compute.

[ipdashc]

... what? Data centers are literally the original form of computer facility. How are they different from the computer rooms mainframes, etc were housed in?

[newsclues]

You think the military can’t or won’t dump billions into this to make killing people with drones more effective?

It’s a engineering challenge not impossible.

[Drakim]

There are asteroids with concentrations of precious metals more valuable than earth's entire economy. Why don't we just send up spaceships to mine them and send the haul back to earth? What country would say no to free money?

After all, it's just an engineering challenge, not impossible.

[fc417fc802]

The numbers on that are at least somewhat questionable. Even ignoring that you'd crash the market (thus it's not actually worth what it first appears to be) what is the total fuel cost to adjust the orbit of the target asteroid to land the entire thing back on the earth? Because that's what you're doing bit by bit as you shuttle loads of ore back.

Now if you have space based manufacturing or fuel production on the other hand ...

[H8crilA]

Why would it ever be more economical to put datacenters in orbit, rather than on some dirt cheap land?

[ACCount37]

There are no NIMBYs in space. No government permitting on land use. And solar power is plentiful. It's like having a dollar store Dyson sphere.

Making use of that is predicated entirely on being able to put a lot of hardware into space cheaply. SpaceX is the undisputed best at that, no one comes close. The question is whether their "best" is good enough to make space datacenters economical.

[delichon]

There are many Not In My Orbit people on this very page. Many current national politicians would be happy to vote AI out of orbit today. Space is not an escape from earthly politics.

[marcosdumay]

> Space is not an escape from earthly politics.

Well, Earth orbit isn't.

[kklisura]

But you don't have to build it in someone's _backyard_, just build it in a middle of nowhere.

[polski-g]

That's literally what datacenter in Utah was and it still had a horde of retards complaining.

[inglor_cz]

I am surprised how many people say that there is no reason to put data centers in orbit, when, at the same time, data centers are becoming the hated thing du jour all over the US and politicians left and right (but mostly left-of-center) are touting bans and restrictions to their electorates.

It is definitely to escape most political pressures on Earth. They will never be able to sidestep the US feds, but aside from an open war with China or Russia, all other authorities are out of the game when it comes to space.

[XorNot]

People don't want to live near data centers. But companies find it logistically cheaper and easier to keep proposing to build them near existing towns and infrastructure, and then deal with regulatory fights rather then picking an isolated area and running an extension of high voltage lines out to them.

Which tells you something about why space data centers makes no sense.

[inglor_cz]

"rather then picking an isolated area and running an extension of high voltage lines out to them."

Does not this usually mean extending/upgrading roads and other infrastructure as well?

IDK how this works in the US, but in most of Europe, a "linear" project like this, which crosses multiple jurisdictions, usually runs into more resistance, not less. The multitude of people and special interests along the line compounds.

In some places, special legislation has been enacted that exempts such linear projects from detailed review and opposition, otherwise pipelines, grid upgrades etc. would stall for decades in courts.

[newsclues]

The data link between earth and space has so much bandwidth.

There are sensors in space that send data to earth it gets processed and then the data is sent back to space then to the end user back on earth. If you do the compute in space you save the space-earth transfer time twice. Latency and availability of bandwidth are both factors.

There may be limited utility for this outside of military.

[readthenotes1]

Because dirt cheap land usually does not have dirt, cheap water or dirt cheap electricity.

[jordanb]

Water in orbit: famously cheap.

[ACCount37]

Ah yes: computation. Famous for annihilating water. Every bit you flip consumes an H2O molecule.

[dgellow]

That won’t ever be the case. It’s pure grift. There is literally no other actual reason

[SlinkyOnStairs]

> I wonder what SpaceX's margins are on these contracts.

In the Anthropic deal they have to be negative; Anthropic's announced higher margins during the deal.

[mrcwinn]

This is all just the typical Elon hate. What's desperate about getting paid $920,000,000 per month? If that's desperation, I'd love to start groveling more!

Given extreme supply constraints, it's very unlikely that Google or Anthropic will just suddenly cancel right after the IPO unless their own demand collapses. And even if this were true, what value would that provide Musk? Could you imagine if your newly public company suddenly received termination notices from your two largest compute customers? Disaster.

Try logic.

[fauigerzigerk]

I have no love or hate for Elon Musk. I wish him luck with his space endeavours.

What's desperate is announcing a temporary (allegedly) doubling of revenues days before an IPO that has been criticised for being overpriced at 93 times sales.

These data centers were supposed to serve xAI. Now suddenly they get rented out to others. Why the sudden change of plans?

It's either an emergency accounting gimmick or the effective shutdown or repurposing of xAI.

[brookst]

It’s a repurposing of xAI to be a commodity service provider during a crunch for that commodity. It would be dumb if xAI had any quality or market traction, but they have neither, so it’s actually a rational fallback. But it writes off any high margin future in favor of low margin scale.

And once the compute crunch is over, they’ll have a lot of overprovisioned data centers with no business to soak up the capacity.

[dyauspitr]

Why don’t you have hate for Elon? You can love his companies but hate the man. It’s what I’m doing anyway.

[ta988]

Didn't Anthropic pull the same in both ways? you pull me up I pull you up kind of deal? Sounds like SpaceX bought themselves some time up to Q4, which is not the case of Anthropic and even worse for OpenAI. Not counting that none of them got their S&P500 fast-track ticket.

[Mistletoe]

Feels like these IPOs are thankfully the top coming before the AI crash and we get back to the real world.

[b40d-48b2-979e]

One can hope, but that sentiment is quite unpopular on HN.

[merlindru]

why would Google help a competitor like that, though?

[sorenjan]

Google (Alphabet) owns 6% of SpaceX which they bought for $12B in 2015. They want to maximize the value of their investment.

[hirako2000]

The article mentions Google is heavily invested in it.

[somewhatgoated]

How is Google competing with SpaceX?

[sublimefire]

If you look at the IPO filings you’ll see that Spacex as we know it is just a small part of the expected revenue generator. It is supposedly Grok and AI, hence Google competitor.

[Forgeties79]

I can’t believe serious people use Grok. It has to be propped up by Twitter usage/Musk fans right? It really strikes me as the worst one.

[pqtyw]

Well you or me also can publish a statement claiming we are Google's competitors. That doesn't mean they'll take it seriously.

[an0malous]

They’re both AI companies

[prymitive]

All companies are now AI companies. Just like a while ago all companies were suddenly Ads companies. The entire tech sector is one big FOMO - once you reach certain scale you do exactly the same thing as everyone else.

[mcintyre1994]

I get what you mean but SpaceX owns xAI, which is objectively a company that trains models and has massive distribution by owning X.

I don’t think their models are competitive with Google, and Google obviously has the best distribution imaginable, but they definitely are a competitor.

[sumeno]

In the way that Michael Jordan and myself are both basketball players

[klodolph]

One of which has more capacity and wants even more, one of which has less capacity and is renting it out.

[nutjob2]

In the sense that if you want to sell anything whatsoever today it must an AI story.

[wiether]

One is an ad company the other a lifestyle venture?

[venkyvb]

Google is safeguarding it's investment in SpaceX.

[devops000]

Maybe common investors want to sell stocks to retail

[YetAnotherNick]

They are not. The amount of conspiracy in high ranked HN comments for AI companies is insane.

[AtNightWeCode]

The same terms Anthropic have today I believe.

[Rover222]

Everything is a conspiracy now.

Of course this is a real deal. Compute is the most valuable resource in the world for these companies at the moment.