Comment by fwlr
1 month ago
Yes, the physics are worse, and yes, the economics are worse, but data centers in space have the crucial advantage that they are out of range of the molotov-throwing arm of Joe Public (recently unemployed).
1 month ago
Yes, the physics are worse, and yes, the economics are worse, but data centers in space have the crucial advantage that they are out of range of the molotov-throwing arm of Joe Public (recently unemployed).
Similarly to Starlink , which was hyped as a low codt alternative for marginalised people/areas and sucked in enormous subsidies to that end. While being more or less a proof of concept for a military command and control network , thats the same way this should be looked at.Especially with data centers being vulnerable on ground, coupled with the ability to reposition the space based units to be 'closer to the action' as it were.
So bottom line a proof of concept for DARPA funds and eventual inegration into the military command and control nodes.
> and sucked in enormous subsidies to that end.
Starlink didn't get any subsidies. There were reports in summer about them potentially getting 600 Mio (btw the broadband program is 40 billion heavy) and I can't find sources that SpaceX got any program founding yet.
> Starlink didn't get any subsidies.
If you don't count the launcher it rides on, and the company that owns both.
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Did Starlink really receive enormous subsidies? IIRC it was kicked out of the federal program in the US due to lobbying from others.
Starlink was granted $880m from the FCC, but later defaulted on conditions, so didn't get most of the money.
Starshield, on the other hand, has been directly funded by the US government to the tune of ~$9b in reported funding (much of it NRO or Space Force classified). It has ~250 satellites up as of now.
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less lobbying, more plain old punishing of political enemies
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I dunno, won't a satellite be _more_ vulnerable in space? There is not anti-missile tech in space.
I suppose it is about being out of reach of cheap drones?
icbms and hypersonics exist, theres no defense against the top end anywhere atm.
if you're in a war where people are shooting your satellites out of the sky you're past the point where defenses matter. theres no grey war in space like russia hiring people to blow up stuff in europe and very few states could take out multiple satellites in space.
beyond that if we ever did get to that point, you could develop anti missile tech in space, you effectively have the high ground sitting at the top of the gravity well.
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It's really about bandwidth and availability - US satcom systems were really struggling, and the only truly global (Iridium) was quite low bandwidth. Starlink is essentially "Iridium with newer tech and mass production" and IIRC DoD through various fronts put quite a lot of early financing to make it a thing, even if later the networks were supposedly disaggregated (would make sense to start building separate one once PoC was proven)
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Yeah similar to the AWS data cneter getting trashed in UAE by cheap drones and short range missiles. I think only 3 states have the capabilities necessary to knock out satellites , and one or two others with latent potential. For the rest of the planet its basically untouchable unless theres more wisespread proliferation in missile tech.
The thing with starlink is that there are a lot of them. It is not a single satellite to take out it is a bunch.
> low codt alternative for marginalised people/areas
Yes, but while I do not see the first, I can clearly see the latter :)
what proportion of use for starlink do you think is military vs rural internet consumers?
Businesses run anywhere real money can be made. Middle east is the most volatile place. Yet, the businesses are perfectly okay building infrastructure to extract, refine and ship oil from there.
If real money can be made, there is no need of datacenters in space. Offer some country some money and they'll let you build whatever you want. The whole idea is entirely unprofitable thats why they are making up things that won't work economically. Keep giving us money indefinitely, we'll keep spending, money can be made after a few decades of spending ... trust us.
Note that you didn't mention any such country, and for good reason - there is none.
You'd need a dictatorship where people's voices don't matter, but then there's no right of ownership either.
> Note that you didn't mention any such country, and for good reason - there is none.
All flavors of Govt (authoritarian/democratic) are bending over backwards to build new DCs.
In Ulanqab, China buildout of data centers 1000x size of Colossus: https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2099319829589295197
India, a country which has neither power nor water or any measurable infrastructure is giving massive subsidies to hyperscalers to build AI DCs. They get free land (very very costly), nearly free energy, guaranteed supply of water and so on ...
Examples of one authoritarian govt and one democratic govt. And there are 180+ other countries.
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> You'd need a dictatorship where people's voices don't matter, but then there's no right of ownership either.
And there are plenty of those countries. As well as countries that aren't dictatorships. Every leader everywhere is available for sale. In democracies, usually for a small sum. Dictatorships ask for a percentage of profit.
Everyone knows how the current administration got to power: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/01/politics/elon-musk-2024-e...
Trump will gladly allow datacenters to be built on federal lands. Just like he allows Oil/Coal and bans Wind and Solar. The only reason there is new story of Space Datacenters is because even if they are given everything by the Govt, it simply won't work.
If you see a datacenter in orbit, it means something went wrong on Earth: https://systemsthinkingcollection.substack.com/p/space-datac...
People believe all kinds of fiction and garbage, like going to Mars. (Why Terraform Mars When We Can Fix The Earth? https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8mhib97--n4)
The same argument holds for AI DCs. If you can build profitable AI datacenters in space, why can't you build profitable AI datacenters on Earth? The only reason is you can't build profitable AI datacenters on earth. Just give us a few more trillions and wait a decade or two, we promise ...
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Your idea is that because AI or data centers are supposedly 'entirely unprofitable', they want to expend even more capital to do it in space with less profit?
And somehow most of the replies seem to be about terrorism. What a comment section.
I'd expect the discussion to be a bit more focused on the scalability and solar power..
I think you are dramatically underestimating the terrorism concern. From public news reports we know almost 400 Flock cameras have been destroyed in acts of widespread grassroots criminal vandalism, and I am sure Flock knows the much higher true number. Likewise for Waymo, we know of at least half a dozen vehicles destroyed and at least two dozen temporarily disabled, and I am similarly sure Waymo knows the much higher true number. From the point of view of a data center executive who has chatted to a Flock or Waymo executive at a social event in the last few years, the risk of vandalism/terrorism is neither hypothetical nor plausible, but literally real and already happening.
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and "thermal radiation"
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The real point is power limitations, putting stuff in space in the right orbit lets you turn solar power into reliable base load.
The disadvantage is that your power generation infrastructure needs replacing at the same time as your chips (at least under current designs) which negates any advantage of needing fewer solar panels at any one point in time and less energy storage.
Also you have to pay for them to be launched, which isn't cheap even if you're SpaceX.
Why stop somewhere in between? You can go straight to the Sun and directly tap into near infinite source of energy. No need of solar panels, direct access to thermonuclear energy, too cheap to meter. The economics already works out, zero capex, zero opex for the next ~4 billion years. Just needs a few small problems to be worked out, like a pipe to transfer energy.
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The problem with space is that you need to radiate all that waste heat.
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Starlink downlink stations aren’t
https://www.reuters.com/world/poland-suspects-fire-starlink-...
That was probably more Igor Sleeperagentovich than Joe Public, but yeah...
It's much easier for Russia to destroy data centers in orbit.
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I'm beginning to wonder if this is actually the motivation, because why the fuck else would you launch computers all the way into space?
Access to unlimited almost free energy is the main point. Other than that you don't need to deal with local politics. Other than that it can actually be a faster round trip (if the satellite combines both connectivity to/from Earth and compute) if you don't have a local datacenter.
Yes, the physics are worse, and yes, the economics are worse, but data centers in space have the crucial advantage that they are out of range of the molotov-throwing arm of Joe Public (recently unemployed).
So are container ships in international waters. Put them there.
or just a really sturdy fence, and guard posts with guns. That's cheaper than space, and infinitely easier too.
Yeah, but guys with guns just doesn't really work for companies that want to remove the human element at every turn.
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Container ships getting rob by pirates all the times.
So unless those pirates have their own space program, it's pretty safe up there.
Container ships on popular routes. But they can be sent out to the middle of nowhere and they would be pretty safe I assume. Also, you may be able to just sink the datacenter's core part and only tether a few solar panels to it (or go nuclear). That way the target is minuscule, you get free cooling and even state-level attacks will have a hard time finding/damaging your data center.
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[Citation needed]
Where does this happen, besides the Gulf of Aden off the Somali coast?
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There's a lot of sci-fi about the wealthy bringing on an apocalypse so they can rule the world that comes out of it. Two examples on TV now are Fallout (from the video games, obviously) and Silo.
One thing that gives me some small level of comfort is that the billionaires who have the means to make that sort of thing happen don't want to live in bunkers or a radioactive wasteland afterwards. They have it pretty good on Earth as it is now. So there's only so bad things can get (I hope).
To your point, it does feel like we are bouldering towards major disruption, even the unravelling of the fabric of society, thanks to worsening inequality as well as the impacts of AI. In the coming decades we may well have a billion climate refugees. We may have large swathes of the population who have no productive outlet in a world that still requires you to have a job to live. And that could go south very, very quickly.
So I guess my point is that if things get so bad you need to put your AI DC in space to avoid the unwashed masses burning it down, I suspect we'll have far bigger problems long before that becomes an issue.
You assume billionaires and politicians are all-powerful and that they congregate in a secret cabal voting on where to take civilization next. No they live in fear of what other powerful people might do and their reactions to what is perceived risk can really f up everything. Even the most powerful autocrats in the world have to deal with other countries.
Framing it as some Illumianti-like dark room cabal is the wrong way to think about it.
Look at our present woes in the Middle East. We have two nuclear powers who are dragging the world towards economic collapse. I believe that before we reach that economic doomsday scenario or anyone seriously considers deploying nuclear weapons, the money behind those powers will oust those who try to push us past the brink.
To this point, I believe there's a very real possibility that Trump gets 25A'ed next year, meaning the 25th Amendment is invoked to remove him from office.
Putting data centers in Antarctica or extreme north Canadian islands would also put you out of the way of molotov-throwing joe public. Even in space your not safe from the voting public as long as your companies directors are sitting on earth somewhere.
Yeah, but those places don’t have 24/7 solar energy
google: orbit
it does not see the sun half of the time
polar orbits don't come to the rescue, they are quite busy already
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Maybe out of reach for Joe Public, but a clear identified target for states.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-confirms-weapons-in-space-ch...
I was thinking more regulation rather than molotovs.
Doesn't the data or whatever have to be received on earth? Can Joe Public do some (light) arson on that?
Russia has (likely) done that already in Poland. But with a constellation using laser interlinks and having multiple ground stations across the world, it becomes a difficult logistical problem.
Satellite phones and Starlink dishes suggest that the data links can cheap, ruggedized, small, distributed, etc.
They're also not controlled by pesky local regulators who are worried about losing elections. By putting them in space it becomes a federal/national defense project, and those regulators are either out of work or compromised or complicit.
I'm going to be fascinated to see how the regulatory arbitrage shakes out long term. What legal provinance applies to infra in space? Does GDPR apply? Can you even enforce GDPR? And you have line of site to users who could connect to it directly, bypassing government-regulated backbones.
GDPR applies regardless of where the data center is located because it applies based on where the user currently resides. Similarly, US laws (including those enabling warrantless surveillance) apply regardless of where the data center is located as long as the owner/customer/controller lives or is based or registered in (or is a subsidiary of an entity that is based or registered in) the US - or if the US decides it has jurisdiction until proven otherwise (cf. Maduro).
You enforce laws the same way you do otherwise: if they are in your jurisdiction and don't comply, you arrest them; if they're in a jursdiction you're friendly with you ask for extradition; if they're in a jurisdiction you're not friendly with and you really need them to cease whatever they ceasen't, you have them accidentally fall out of a high enough window.
You can't shut down a DC in space. But even if someone has moved their DC into space, their terrestial human body is still very easily shut down one way or another. And maybe less gruesomely, so is whatever comms infrastructure they need to maintain in order to actually connect to that DC - if the DC is sufficiently "out of reach" (i.e. not in low Earth orbit) it likely requires optical transmission if it can accomplish any data rate high enough to allow it to be used for something sufficiently annoying and optics are fickle and require careful calibration.
But seriously, us tech nerds routinely underestimate rubber hose cryptoanalyis (cf. XKCD 538). If you can bypass government regulation it's because the government isn't sufficiently interested in making you stop whatever it is you think you need to bypass their regulations to do. If your goal with operating a DC in space is to evade the "regulatory arbitrage", you're literally advertising your intent to operate what will most likely be a criminal enterprise so unless you have sufficient financial resources to exert political leverage in your favor (cf. Musk), you're just asking for trouble.
There are cheaper alternatives to that. In soace you have this guy called radiation environment that will fry your TPUs pretty fast.
A little company named SpaceX currently has over 10,000 working satellites in orbit using commercial chips in that “radiation environment”.
And how are they doing? Is the rate of failure sustainable? Is the future rate of failure of 10k fleet with some years on them?
If people have no jobs and no money they will build rockets and blow those things up.
So, barely no benefit?
Good thing Joe Public wouldn’t then decide to interfere with launches.
I dunno, considering how various insurgent groups manage to make some reasonably impressive rocketry, I have to believe that in a few years with AI assistance (abliterate all the things) knocking a LEO satellite out of orbit won't be that much harder than sabotaging an electrical substation.
We're talking about an exceptionally vulnerable target with a perfectly predictable path of travel here. And it's constantly emitting lots of RF making it easy to track. You just have to get near it and explode with shrapnel.
Totally illegal, of course. But it will be within the reach of millions of people if they want to do it.
I don't think "just move to space bro" is going to stop the pitchfork-mob.
I think the failures of most rocket startups to launch even with billions of dollars and thousands of real engineers shows how unlikely this is.
And say you do build an orbital class rocket and manage to launch it without anyone noticing before you do - how many of e.g. Starlink’s 11,000 satellites will you be able to damage? What real impact will that have on Starlink?
They're trying to do something vastly more difficult: get a payload into orbit without damaging it.
It's much easier to wreck shit than transport it safely.
You still need hundreds of tonnes of rocket fuel no matter what, though.
You don’t have to intercept the satellites in orbit, they fall back to earth in a few years on their own. What SpaceX et al need to defend against is attacks while they are still on the ground or seconds after launch. Next round of investment will put the factories on the moon (only then will we see calls from the general public to Blow Up the Moon)
Back of the napkin math says a bare minimum of ~2000kg of solid fuel in three stages to “get to” GEO using a 3-stage rocket, to deliver 1kg of “something.” You’d need a gravity assist highly elliptical orbit which is a touch harder to pull off (but probably not harder than getting 2000kg of ammonium perchlorate). Plus building the actual rocket, guidance computer, etc.
Not trivial but not impossible. If you’ve got a few hundred million people with nothing better to do, I’m sure a few dozen/hundred could pull it off.
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Polluting LEO with debris is not the way to solve the problem of goods distribution. But, sure, there will be morons who consider it.
People who could do it successfully would hardy be considered morons. That would be a genius engineer.
The general attitude in this thread against reasonable people not wanting unsustainable megaliths that produce horrible amounts of noise, and are driving up electricity prices, in their communities without any input from said community is astonishing.
HN has really gone full AI derangement syndrome (it runs both directions).
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That sounds way too categorical.
It's not like people actually need satellites. We already have ground-based communication in the form of mobile phone networks etc., so I don't think the harm of making LEO unusable would be very great.
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Wait until someone figures out how to get AI to tutor them making ballistic rockets.
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There is no evidence that AI will increase unemployment.
This is what AI was fucking promoted as being for! The utopia where machines do all our work and we receive universal basic income to enjoy our freedoms.
Taking away work was exactly the premise it was sold under.
AI being able to work for us does not mean that AI reduces employment. Every form of automation does work for us. But there is no limit to how much work can be done. And there are things that humans uniquely do that AI will never be able to do because we will never want to create AI as dangerous as human intelligence, but those same traits that make human intelligence dangerous also provide it with unique value in many domains.
The promise is that it'll make producing goods and services more efficient, like just about every other invention in human history. As always, that does put some people out of work in the short term, but it doesn't increase unemployment over the long term, and it makes all of society richer, not just the few who invented it.
> we receive universal basic income
Well, this part ain't coming without a revolution.
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>This is what AI was fucking promoted as being for! The utopia where machines do all our work and we receive universal basic income to enjoy our freedoms.
No one promised any utopia of any sort. The only promise was that AI would put people out of work. The rest is just some naive Star Trek bullshit that was never on the table.
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> This is what AI was fucking promoted as being for!
Pretty sure all it's being promoted for is that it will make ~10 people richer than any human being in history.
We are the Horse from Animal Farm.
You must be trolling at this point.