where is the fiduciary duty to shareholders in burning warehouses full of cash on stupid bullshit like this?
i guess the shareholders are dipshits too
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2026
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the prototype satellite is part of the tech giant’s Project Suncatcher. As its name suggests, the goal is to take advantage of unfiltered sunlight around the clock to power AI data centers in our planet’s orbit — instead of crushing the electrical grid, spewing copious amounts of pollution, and draining fresh water supplies back on the ground.
They know they could use solar on the ground too right? They are making it seem like they care about the environment, but if there was a way to suck hydrocarbon power from the surface they would 100% do it
BuT iT's UnFiLtErEd
solar on earth only works half the time
Not if you store the excess you produce in sodium batteries
It's really difficult to cool things in space, and it's really difficult to power stationary things in space. It's also really expensive to put things in space so size/weight is a problem.
So if it's not cheaper/better for cooling, and it's not cheaper/better for power, and it's not cheaper/better for rack space.. why is there a focus on shipping compute to space?
The point I keep coming back to is that it's really hard for the public to protest/damage/destroy data centres in space.
I think its simpler than that, its just stock price pumping. They can tell the plebs that they have the tech to put servers in space, and the plebs will eat it up and pump the stock.
You can still destroy the terrestrial base stations.
No laws and regulation in space.
But too bad, the customers aren't also in space!
It's extremely difficult from a cooling perspective IIRC, way more than on earth. Like you have to vent into a near vacuum, which is one of the best insulators.
You have to radiate it. If you vent, you run out of whatever medium you're using to cool in a few minutes.
The only legitimate thing I can think of is that if we ever colonize the moon or mars, we are going to need compute and storage at the location. If we can launch equipment into orbit instead of waiting until it's needed then it'll give a headstart to test different solutions. If we can also figure out how to do that without having to build it or maintain it on the moon/mars, then that might result in less risk. But it's all conjecture and you don't know what you don't know unless you try.
Even if they could pull it off, the data transmission speed would be sooooo bad relative to what it would take to ingest insane amount of data and then regurgitate it back.
On the other hand, how easy is it to swap out a rack after a fault?
with a new satellite data center.
If they're putting the date centres in space I am going to problem with them anymore.
I think you a word
What a stupid fucking idea
Silicon valley in a nutshell. No end of idiot ideas and endless amount of money to fund them all.
I wonder how they're going to cool it?
Edit: Oh. So they're just... not doing that. Okay. Hmm.
In the meantime, the company is taking baby steps. For now, the company is limited to just 15 minutes of operation in space before the chips have to be shut off to cool back down.
"It's just a proof of concept guys, there are totally tons of good reasons to do this. We are definitely not just mashing sci-fi words together to scam investors."
Not only that but,
...until it meets its final demise by burning up in the atmosphere.
Can't event be recycled in any way. Literally maximum waste.
to replace it, they would have to launch a new satellite with new chips. its very wasteful.
That's just what we need, a single individual server in space with incredibly long latency times. Really useful technology. This brilliant idea is brought to you by the same people that came up with the totally workable idea of mirrors in space to charge for sunlight.
Building a relatively puny and ineffective data center because they're idiots? perhaps. Doing it knowing it'll provide overwhelming evidence that the idea is really dumb and making some well timed shorts against a certain launch company with an inflated value that's been touting this very concept, maybe? (idk what I'm really talking about but it's what comes to mind.)
Could Sergey be on it?
Just waiting for them to realize it's more cost-effective to just keep destroying the environment.
Throwing shit in space burns heaps more CO2 than building it on the ground ya know, this destroys the environment more than if they were building it down here
dogshit ass timeline where billionaire sociopaths keep doing the wrong things got me truly irritated since 2020
It's so stupid. Wouldn't doing the same thing but on the bottom of the sea be less expensive, more realistic and with less of an environmental impact? You could cool the machines easier, get power from the water movement and there is plenty of space on the bottom.
even then the sea is somewhat unrealistic, because you would still be replacing the parts, you have to deal with corrosion, and other things like water pressure. and sea life likes to encrust on manmade objects too.
Sure. Everything needs maintenance. Still much much cheaper this way then the orbit.
Microsoft successfully did that somewhere near Scotland iirc.
I read somewhere that china was also doing some experiments. Oh here it is: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/09/worlds-first-wind-powered-underwater-datacentre-starts-operating-in-china
Though I swear I saw another experiment with the entire thing submerged all the way to the bottom in a marina or something, but cannot find it.
Ignoring the hundred reasons this is dumb, I would just love to know the launch cost per expected compute.
Best quote from article is at the very end:
For now, the company is limited to just 15 minutes of operation in space before the chips have to be shut off to cool back down.
That will likely end up being 15 minutes total.
Brilliant. They should invest every penny into this. If they got this far without even referencing a 6th grade science book, they deserve to go under.
More space junk!
My dick pics gonna be an astronaut like Katy Perry.
air jerk
Home lab in space usable for 15 mins.
Nice! Oh, "Data Center"... Misread it as "CEO".
"fridge-sized data center" REALLY cracks me up. Like, how much processing power can you fit in there, considering all the space you need for cooling. And then I'm imagining some bloke on the ISS looking outside and just seeing a fridge float there hehe.
What I don't like is thinking further about this. If this is how they want to roll out a bit of processing power in space, I can totally imagine them just yeeting like 5000 fridges into LEO, polluting it even more :(
Also, how'd it get so far? None of the engineers at Google screaming about how this is a really REALLY bad idea? Do they think that these datacenters are gonna be more acceptable by the public than the ones on Earth and accept the lower efficiency for better PR? I mean, that would make sense, if Google would care about looks, which I don't think they do.
F.U.C.K. SCROOGLE! I hope they lose their asses on this!
We need an acronym, like "Fine" (freaked out, insecure, neurotic, emotional) from Italian Job.
F.U.C.K. = Fucking Useless Crooked Killjoy