There are 8,000+ Starlink satellites in orbit right now. Each one has about 30 square-meters of solar panels. That's 240,000 square meters. ISS has 25,000 square meters, so SpaceX has already launched almost 10-times the solar panels of ISS.

The next generation Starlink (V3) will have 250 square meters of solar panels per satellite, and they are planning on launching about 10,000 of them, so now you're at 2.5 million m^2 of panels or 100 times ISS.

All those satellites have their own radiators to manage heat. True, they lose some heat by beaming it to the ground, but data center satellites would just need proportionally larger radiators.

And, of course, all those satellite have CPUs and memory chips; they are already hardened to resist space radiation (or else they wouldn't function).

Almost every single objection to data centers in space has already been overcome at a smaller scale with Starlink. The only one that might apply is cost: if it's cheaper to build data centers on Earth, then space doesn't make sense (and it won't happen). But prices are always coming down in space, and prices on Earth keep going up (because of environmental restrictions).

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kaashif 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The only one that might apply is cost: if it's cheaper to build data centers on Earth, then space doesn't make sense (and it won't happen).

So the only problem left to be solved is that space datacenters would be millions of times more expensive per unit of compute than a ground based datacenter. And cost millions of times more to maintain.

	▲	GMoromisato an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Starlink cost maybe $10 billion. A 100,000 gpu data center costs between $20 and $40 billion to build. Also remember that data centers last for about 5 years; after that the gpus are obsolete. That’s no different than the lifetime of a Starlink satellite.

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santoshalper 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The facts you quoted just made me even more convinced that space-based datacenters will not be cost effective any time soon. If an entire generation of satellites costing many billions of dollars can't power more GPUs than a single terrestrial datacenter, how could it possibly be cost effective?

	▲	GMoromisato an hour ago \| parent [-]
		A data center costs $20 to $40 billion! And launch costs keep dropping. Plus, environmental costs of data centers keep rising.

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morshu9001 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

At what price per MW of load?

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GMoromisato an hour ago | parent [-]

The Starlink constellation cost $10 billion. That’s comparable to a small data center (maybe 50,000 gpus).

If launch costs keep dropping and environmental costs keep rising, space based data centers will make sense.

	▲	nish__ 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		What a ridiculous waste of money.

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phsau 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>Almost every single objection to data centers in space has already been overcome at a smaller scale with Starlink

Did you not read the article? It had many objections that make it clear datacenters in space are unworkable...

	▲	GMoromisato an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Starlink is already a small data center! It has power, radiators, and compute! It needs to be scaled up, but there is no obstacle to that (at least none that the article mentions). The only valid objection is cost, but space prices keep dropping and earth prices keep rising.