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An in-space construction firm says it can help build massive data centers in orbit
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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Getting rid of the heat is going to be an issue for that... along with the massive pollution from the many launches required to get this in orbit.
The heat will just dissipate in the air, and they can launch it at night when it's colder. Science!
/s in case, there are a few mouth breathers out today
They could build them so that they stay in perpetual dawn or dusk. One edge with the solar panels in the su, the other edge with the cooling fins in the night’s cool breeze.
Oh! Oh! Attach it to a meteorite! Almost infinite heatsink in space!
Kessler syndrome goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I'm pretty sure they're aware of the need for radiators. They've probably designed satellites before.
Nobody thinks they're incapable of working this out; we think theyre deliberately advertising something dumb that lay people won't necessarily understand is dumb. Replying that they have smart engineers is stupid because no-one denied it - we just don't think they used those engineers to come up with the idea.
yes but they're not trying to dissipate megawatts usually
Again, I'm pretty sure they're aware that you need bigger radiators when you're using more energy. This is space engineering 101.
literal kilometers of panels and radiators. No. It won't happen
If only they'd hired you, they would have known.
well any actual engineer who isn't trying to sell them will readily tell you that a datacenter in space is a very bad idea.
They'd better not try to sell them to anyone who has access to an engineer, then. Just a single engineer will bring the whole scheme crashing down.
for starters, at the loads they're running at, they have literally hundreds of gpu failures a day. How do you propose doing that in space?
Include spares.
I hope they're reading this thread and taking notes, they probably didn't think of that.
and the infrastructure and robotics to replace them, of course.
Assuming 200 nvidia H100 failures a day (conservativo, reality is worse) that's an extra ~340kg of weight you'd need to launch per day. Which is an extra 120 tons yearly.
So, one Starship launch per year. Doesn't sound like a problem.
at least two, you can't stuff a rocket full of just gpus, you need something to actually dock and deliver the payload in space. So you need to launch at least 2 rockets (in a non-reusable configuration, so you need to pay for the whole rocket and the launch) to ship a bunch of gpus that are, at best, only 10% as fast as usual.
Okay, two then. It's still cheap.
Why do you say that? 120 tons is well within Block 4's projected capacity in reusable configuration. 240 tons is almost within it, even.
and forget about running 4nm chips in space. shit has to be radiation hardened, which means bigger process nodes and higher energy cost, and lower speed
Another thing they probably didn't think of. Nobody's run chips in space before.
they did think of it. lots of people have. I just mentioned what was required. Rad hardened processors are usually 10 to 20 times slower than what we have on the surface
So don't use rad-hardened processors, put them in a radiation vault instead. Those become more mass-efficient the more hardware you're putting inside them.
Really, I assure you the people proposing these things have put more thought and expertise into it than a bunch of random Fediverse commentators.
Edit: don't feed the troll.
But he's so hungry. :(