this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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Anybody Who Thinks Orbital Data Centers are a Good Idea Is Suffering from AI Psychosis, Experts Argue (tech.yahoo.com)
submitted 1 day ago by Some_Emo_Chick@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[โ€“] kevinsky@feddit.nl 24 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (9 children)

I don't know how that even got past the brainfart stage. AFAIK nobody has actually demonstrated how that would really work.

  • Despite SpaceX's advancements in regards to things like resutable rockets, shooting stuff into space is still prohibitively expensive.
  • Server clusters are exceptionally heavy.
  • Server clusters run hot, cooling is not a triviality considering you can't just rely on convection in space, so more mass for alternative solutions.
  • Datacenters need regular maintenace.
  • Logic boards won't do well with the radiation in space.
  • Despite SpaceX's advancements in regards to things like sattelite internet, getting large datacenter level quantities of data from earth into space and back, and at low latency, is no triviality.

Not saying this won't ever be a thing. But not in the lifetime of anybody on earth right now I don't think.

[โ€“] CorvusVolvens@infosec.pub 4 points 3 hours ago

I agree, that this is at the moment not a viable thing and especially the SpaceX "concept" is complete bullshit.

I do not agree with some of your points, since they are solved/irrelevant (e.g. "regular maintenance", "low latency") or could be overcome with reasonable tech advances (e.g. "rockets prohibitively expensive", "radiation shielding").

Let me steelman the argument a bit with this single bit of - sadly forgotten - "super cool and innovative tech": "Underwater data center", like project Natick (Microsoft) or the Chinese project:

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/chinas-hicloud-launches-wind-powered-underwater-data-center-targets-500mw-subsea-deployment/

Soooooo, if we will ever see something other than our current land based data centers, we will see millions of ocean data centers, before we will ever see a single commercial space data center.

Reasons:

  • Delivery is super cheap (in comparison to space) at scale, thanks to the already existing wind farm infrastructure
  • Weight is not an issue
  • Cooling is solved
  • Maintenance is not necessary, but replacement is. Easy on scale, because modular.
  • No radiation shielding necessary
  • Connection: data cable = no extra lag or quantity limit

Oh, and by the way, it is still not clear if even ocean data center will be viable. Just found this ๐Ÿ˜‚

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/spacexs-orbital-data-centers-could-face-same-hurdles-microsofts-abandoned-2026-04-01/

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