[trothamel]

I suspect that this is the start of a play for SpaceX's orbital datacenter project - if they're really planning on launching as many satellites as they've said (and Starship is going to massively lower the cost of launch), they won't be able to fill them with Grok. So perhaps it's best to become the infrastructure provider to the other AI Labs.

[542458]

Is there anything to read on how the economics of an orbital datacenter make any sense? Because I don't really see how blasting a server into space solves any of the typical issues associated with datacentres beyond easier access to solar.

[JumpCrisscross]

> anything to read on how the economics of an orbital datacenter make any sense?

I'll do a write-up at some point. But the core drivers are launch cost, permitting delays for terrestrial datacentres and interest rates.

The balance is between, on one hand, the financing cost of the permiting delays against, on the other hand, the cost of launching radiators. (Chips are light. Solar panels without glass cladding are surprisingly light, too. The weight of an orbital datacenter is almost entirely in its radiator.)

The math high-level works with Starship (6 flights/year), 3+ year financing delays and a 10 kg/kW radeiator (assuming 6% financing cost). Of course, there are devils upon devils in the details. But directionally, we're seeing pushback against terrestrial datacenters. And from what I can tell, advanced heat pipes may be the unlock to get radiators down to 5 to 6 kg/kW, at which point I think even New Glenn's $300/kg projected prices become competitive.

It all goes out the window if launch costs don't come down, interest rates go above 10%, terrestrial datacenters start getting built quicker, or demand for this category of compute collapses.

[ForHackernews]

> permitting delays for terrestrial datacentres

"Well, you didn't want a data centre in the field near your town, so instead we'll rain astrocentere debris across the western hemisphere and set off a Kessler syndrome cascade. Thank god we didn't have to wait for a permit."

[ben_w]

I get the point, but if society cared about globally distributed pollution more than about money, we've have transitioned to renewables and EVs a decade or three earlier.

[SiempreViernes]

A lot of bribes have been spent to buy that delay you know, the first global meetings about addressing climate change happened in 1992 and the petrostates have been stalling since then.

[ben_w]

Musk has a lot of money for that, too, if he wanted.

Also, well before then, most of the bigger petrostates got together to create OPEC, raised prices enough to cause an economic crisis and stagflation. I don't doubt that big oil companies have bribed and/or SuperPACed and/or lobbied, but fact was, until the mid 2010s (exact year depending on where you live), renewables were more expensive than oil. Now PV and wind are both cheaper. But before renewables were cheaper they were a very hard sell, while "support oil and coal because power is critical" was a very easy sell.

Right now, space data centres are a hard sell even economically, but given most of the land area of the world isn't the USA, I can easily imagine the US not caring (because even what survives re-entry mostly won't end up in the US), while everyone else can care as much as they like but can't do anything about it (unless I'm right about a completely unrelated topic, which is that we're pretty close to ground-to-orbit laser weapons being viable).

[fragmede]

With the pushback against data center build outs, I don't see

> permitting delays for terrestrial datacentres

going down any time soon, or even being possible.

[s1artibartfast]

why are oribital datacenters favored by lower financing costs? Is this assuming that the full project cost is locked up during permitting? Land costs I can see, but how much of a center buildout is that these days?

[JumpCrisscross]

> why are oribital datacenters favored by lower financing costs?

Rates drive permitting costs. If rates are 1%, a 3-year delay is tolerable. If they’re 5%, that might crash your economics on its own.

[Tycho]

The idea is that eventually the power demand for AI compute will be too great to satisfy by terrestrial means.

[rcpt]

I think the only way it makes sense is if local busybodies succeed in banning data centers from the ground.