Assuming they can solve the cooling problem, there are still major problems with space data center at the scale proponents talk about.
First, getting them up there.
Second, disposal of them when they reach end of life, which is about 5 years.
The difficulty with getting them up there is we currently don't have orbital rockets that don't cause tremendous damage to the upper stratosphere. It has been tolerable so far because we've only done about 7500 orbital launches over the history of spaceflight.
The more extreme plans, like Musk's for a million data centers in space, would require around 10000 launches to get them deployed and then as they age 2000 launches a year to replace old ones.
There is active research and development on rocket fuels that won't cause massive damage, so this problem may be surmountable.
Reentry at end of life is also a concern. As they burn up they deposit things in the upper stratosphere that we really don't want there. As with launches that's not been a problem yet because over the entire history of spaceflight there have only been about 10k satellites and rocket bodies that have reentered, plus about 25k small things like debris.
That would be around 200k per year under the million data center in space plan. I don't know if it is possible to build them so they don't cause problems on reentry.
Probably a better approach for now is to build them in places where large power generation projects are being built. Those projects are already adding new power transmission capacity to get the power to cities, and it should be fairly efficient to at the same time add massive fiber internet capacity along the same right of way used for the transmission lines.
Such structures would have better latency due to locality, they wouldn't be subject to transmission interference from weather, they'd be far more accessible for replacements/upgrades, and being underground naturally aids in cooling and noise suppression.
While it would be resource intensive to dig out the underground structure, I'd be surprised if it even came close to the resource expenditure required to launch all your computer hardware into stable orbit, not even accounting for the fact that the former is a one-time, up-front cost, while the latter would have to be re-done every time you replace hardware.
While that "solution" is, er, not strictly against the laws of physics, it still falls into the subcategory of "utterly insane", once one looks at the real tonnages and watts and dollars and engineering problems.
It was never a serious proposal, it's just some zillionaire's daydream about having their own Neuromancer-style space-station, a place where their word is law and their dynasty assured by a pet superintelligence.
The only "data-center in space" we're likely to see will be tiny low-power satellites, offering themselves as extraterritorial hosting (i.e. actual data, versus processing) for stuff like an oligarch's ill-gotten crypto-currency.
No, they aren't, certainly not in a way which could "leave more room and resources for humans and wildlife."
Yeah, Jeff Bezos gives it some lip-service, but that's to promote Blue Origin as a company to launch rockets. Somebody will probably launch a symbolic little temporary thing to claim the prestige of "first datacenter in space".
But beyond that? Nobody's planning exaflops of compute in orbit, if they're sinking deep investment in satellites at all, it'll be for their classical role of relaying (or collecting) data.
There is obvious strategic value in bringing some compute into orbit, since realistically such a DC can only be affected by a handful of potential actors. But putting anything more into orbit than a small strategic backup simply makes no sense.
If the issue was "leaving more room and resources for humans and wildlife", it would be much cheaper and easier to put DCs into the ocean. Yes, it's a hostile environment for such hardware, but it would still be much cheaper to handle all the downsides for the same amount of compute - including maintenance, which is currently economically impossible for DCs in orbit.
Usually with these things people pursue a quasi impossible vision that ends up generating useful technological advances along the way. The funding will come from an ultra high risk R&D grade allocation and there will be someone in the supply chain that will benefit regardless of the final outcome. If you look at it from that angle then it is less surprising people around the planet will give it a go. Plus the mockup pictures look cool so free marketing and shocking headlines.
There’s already datacenters in space though. Does starlink not count as a datacenter? What, their nodes are too small by modern standards? It is still a networked array of compute nodes, in space, currently operating.
What is a datacenter? A series of compute nodes connected to eachother that happen to be in a warehouse for pragmatic purposes. I don't see how the starlink array is very different than that short of having them sit in some single structure. They are a connected array of compute nodes. That is basically a data center.
If space doesn't work or is deemed too expensive put them right next to the house where the CEO of the company and his family live. Same with nuclear plants, rocket launch sites and chemical plants.
The article seems to be confusing Republicans with people in GOP counties. Republicans are politicians, and just like Democrats, they're only in it for the special interest groups that bribe them, while being completely out of touch with their constituents.
The current Republican President and his administration are presenting opposition of data centers as a hoax perpetrated by political enemies and/or China to cripple America’s ability to compete in AI. It’s important to know that his own voters disagree with that.
Depends on the datacenter. If SpaceX etc weren't intent on cutting corners with illegal natural gas generators and trying to trick locals there wouldn't be any push back. Its not like we started building these things in the last couple of years. I've been to plenty of data centers that no one even knew were data centers because they weren't the size of Manhattan and spewing out tons of noise pollution.
Data centers are only going up near populations because the DCs want the community to pay for all the infrastructure upgrades and higher rates.
If the DCs had to go it alone, wait who are we kidding? They never even thought of that path, it's all about how to push the costs on to locals. They want all the freebies they can get.
People aren't "Republicans" or "Democrats" or whatever. They're people. Of course "Republican support" collapses in communities once you start asking people what they want.
You would wish but it's way too prevalent to call oneself "Republican" or "Democrat" and promise lifetime loyalty. Take almost anything they are mad about when the "other" side does it and ask how they'd feel if "their" side did it.
Both my parents are/were this way for Republicans. They don't care about the sexual assaults, the destruction of the government, or the billions of dollars of corrupt money heading to the president and his cabinet. Or worse, he outright calls me a liar when I inform him of the facts.
He can say billionaires are unethical ipso facto, that the poor shouldn't die from lack of healthcare, and that corruption is bad. But then say he has no choice but to vote Republican because "Democrats are worse" and "they want to turn boys into girls.". He thinks Fox News is too liberal.
They certainly exist, and in great numbers, if there aren't 75 Democratic senators and 300+ Democratic House reps by 2028.
The comment makes perfect sense, especially given the current political climate of the US and what Republicans are clearly indicating they want... Not sure what you are on about.
Find this quite funny overall. In the end Loudoun and Santa Clara get cheap power and lower property taxes than otherwise because they host so many datacenters. It’s pretty good that local policy leads to such good outcomes for people. Huge fan of this structure.
The policy-outcome feedback loop should be tight. People rapidly adapt when that happens.
Fortunately site selection is still possible and construction teams are still well occupied. America’s fortunate to enter a period with such clean industry. Dropping the ball here would have been so foolish.
Well, at the minimum "Santa Clara gets cheap power because they host so many data centers" reverses the causality. SVP was already cheaper than PG&E before data centers existed at all, and the decent data center buildout hasn't pushed prices down. Santa Clara property taxes are typical for the area.
DCs set up there because power was cheap, train coverage is good (useful for construction), fiber is everywhere, and of course lobbyists and politicians have their hands out all over NoVa
One solution is to put them in space, leaving more room and resources for humans and wildlife.
Assuming they can solve the cooling problem, there are still major problems with space data center at the scale proponents talk about.
First, getting them up there.
Second, disposal of them when they reach end of life, which is about 5 years.
The difficulty with getting them up there is we currently don't have orbital rockets that don't cause tremendous damage to the upper stratosphere. It has been tolerable so far because we've only done about 7500 orbital launches over the history of spaceflight.
The more extreme plans, like Musk's for a million data centers in space, would require around 10000 launches to get them deployed and then as they age 2000 launches a year to replace old ones.
There is active research and development on rocket fuels that won't cause massive damage, so this problem may be surmountable.
Reentry at end of life is also a concern. As they burn up they deposit things in the upper stratosphere that we really don't want there. As with launches that's not been a problem yet because over the entire history of spaceflight there have only been about 10k satellites and rocket bodies that have reentered, plus about 25k small things like debris.
That would be around 200k per year under the million data center in space plan. I don't know if it is possible to build them so they don't cause problems on reentry.
Probably a better approach for now is to build them in places where large power generation projects are being built. Those projects are already adding new power transmission capacity to get the power to cities, and it should be fairly efficient to at the same time add massive fiber internet capacity along the same right of way used for the transmission lines.
Why not build underground structures?
Such structures would have better latency due to locality, they wouldn't be subject to transmission interference from weather, they'd be far more accessible for replacements/upgrades, and being underground naturally aids in cooling and noise suppression.
While it would be resource intensive to dig out the underground structure, I'd be surprised if it even came close to the resource expenditure required to launch all your computer hardware into stable orbit, not even accounting for the fact that the former is a one-time, up-front cost, while the latter would have to be re-done every time you replace hardware.
Space is pretty big. Where would you propose putting them and what will you do when a switch port fails?
This is an idea that is getting a lot of airtime but not sure if anyone practical minded thinks it is viable in the next 15 years.
While that "solution" is, er, not strictly against the laws of physics, it still falls into the subcategory of "utterly insane", once one looks at the real tonnages and watts and dollars and engineering problems.
It was never a serious proposal, it's just some zillionaire's daydream about having their own Neuromancer-style space-station, a place where their word is law and their dynasty assured by a pet superintelligence.
The only "data-center in space" we're likely to see will be tiny low-power satellites, offering themselves as extraterritorial hosting (i.e. actual data, versus processing) for stuff like an oligarch's ill-gotten crypto-currency.
You do realize that alphabet and amazon are also pursuing this, right?
No, they aren't, certainly not in a way which could "leave more room and resources for humans and wildlife."
Yeah, Jeff Bezos gives it some lip-service, but that's to promote Blue Origin as a company to launch rockets. Somebody will probably launch a symbolic little temporary thing to claim the prestige of "first datacenter in space".
But beyond that? Nobody's planning exaflops of compute in orbit, if they're sinking deep investment in satellites at all, it'll be for their classical role of relaying (or collecting) data.
Ok, if you think Jeff Bezos is lying and Alphabet too, how about China: https://spacenews.com/china-backs-orbital-data-center-startu...
There is obvious strategic value in bringing some compute into orbit, since realistically such a DC can only be affected by a handful of potential actors. But putting anything more into orbit than a small strategic backup simply makes no sense.
If the issue was "leaving more room and resources for humans and wildlife", it would be much cheaper and easier to put DCs into the ocean. Yes, it's a hostile environment for such hardware, but it would still be much cheaper to handle all the downsides for the same amount of compute - including maintenance, which is currently economically impossible for DCs in orbit.
Usually with these things people pursue a quasi impossible vision that ends up generating useful technological advances along the way. The funding will come from an ultra high risk R&D grade allocation and there will be someone in the supply chain that will benefit regardless of the final outcome. If you look at it from that angle then it is less surprising people around the planet will give it a go. Plus the mockup pictures look cool so free marketing and shocking headlines.
As soon as we figure out how to build a practical and cost effective way to radiate megawatts of heat in a vacuum I'm sure we will!
Gigawatts
Why don't we just put them where the people who want them live?
Heat radiation by convection doesn't work great in a vacuum.
"Our researchers were so busy working out whether they could, noone stopped to wonder whether they should"
this is the way!
one of the biggest threats to AI accelerationism longterm is the public rioting or foreign governments launching attacks against data centers
the plebians won't be able to burn the data centers if you put them in space though.
And yet no proof-of-concept has been attempted. Just another Elon saying at this point.
There’s already datacenters in space though. Does starlink not count as a datacenter? What, their nodes are too small by modern standards? It is still a networked array of compute nodes, in space, currently operating.
No, a satellite is not a datacenter. The suffix is center. Example: A WAN is not a datacenter, it is a network.
What is a datacenter? A series of compute nodes connected to eachother that happen to be in a warehouse for pragmatic purposes. I don't see how the starlink array is very different than that short of having them sit in some single structure. They are a connected array of compute nodes. That is basically a data center.
Yes, having them sit in a physical location together is the "C" in DC.
Semantic arguments, not technical ones.
The tech argument is the bottom layer, the physical layer, does not exist.
Another solution is to pray to the sun god for the wisdom of the universe.
If space doesn't work or is deemed too expensive put them right next to the house where the CEO of the company and his family live. Same with nuclear plants, rocket launch sites and chemical plants.
Your suggestion to put industrial sites like nuclear plants, rocket launch sites, and chemical plants next to people is not a good idea.
A lot of these plants are built next to people. Just not next to the people who make the decision where to put them. Look up “cancer alley”.
The article seems to be confusing Republicans with people in GOP counties. Republicans are politicians, and just like Democrats, they're only in it for the special interest groups that bribe them, while being completely out of touch with their constituents.
BTW this data is drawn from a US map of the entire US data center built-out, county by county:
https://pressaudit.org/blog/datacenters
The title is extremely misleading. Local support collapses almost identically regardless of party affiliation.
This is more indicative of the general NIMBY effect.
The current Republican President and his administration are presenting opposition of data centers as a hoax perpetrated by political enemies and/or China to cripple America’s ability to compete in AI. It’s important to know that his own voters disagree with that.
Still nothing to do with party affiliation. Voters disagree with the vast majority of what politicians in Washington want, regardless of party.
The point isn’t about party affiliation, the point is that the administration is lying.
what are the pros and cons of having a data center in your county? and does it actually change residents day to day lives in any noticeable way?
Depends on the datacenter. If SpaceX etc weren't intent on cutting corners with illegal natural gas generators and trying to trick locals there wouldn't be any push back. Its not like we started building these things in the last couple of years. I've been to plenty of data centers that no one even knew were data centers because they weren't the size of Manhattan and spewing out tons of noise pollution.
Data centers are only going up near populations because the DCs want the community to pay for all the infrastructure upgrades and higher rates.
If the DCs had to go it alone, wait who are we kidding? They never even thought of that path, it's all about how to push the costs on to locals. They want all the freebies they can get.
They bring nothing to the table
People aren't "Republicans" or "Democrats" or whatever. They're people. Of course "Republican support" collapses in communities once you start asking people what they want.
[EDIT: damn. y'all in the comments. whoosh]
"People aren't "Republicans" or "Democrats" "
You would wish but it's way too prevalent to call oneself "Republican" or "Democrat" and promise lifetime loyalty. Take almost anything they are mad about when the "other" side does it and ask how they'd feel if "their" side did it.
> it's way too prevalent to call oneself "Republican" or "Democrat" and promise lifetime loyalty.
Where?!? I have travelled all over the USA and I have never a met a person like this.
I don’t know what people you are meeting in what context but it’s quite common.
Both my parents are/were this way for Republicans. They don't care about the sexual assaults, the destruction of the government, or the billions of dollars of corrupt money heading to the president and his cabinet. Or worse, he outright calls me a liar when I inform him of the facts.
He can say billionaires are unethical ipso facto, that the poor shouldn't die from lack of healthcare, and that corruption is bad. But then say he has no choice but to vote Republican because "Democrats are worse" and "they want to turn boys into girls.". He thinks Fox News is too liberal.
They certainly exist, and in great numbers, if there aren't 75 Democratic senators and 300+ Democratic House reps by 2028.
Coastal elites (in the USA) will gladly do this and let you know about it even if you never ask (like vegans).
I have some friend circles where upwards of 50% people do this.
To be fair it is far less prevalent outside of the US thank god.
Careful about not believing people when they tell you what they are.
Your statement literally means nothing. It's not even making an argument.
The comment makes perfect sense, especially given the current political climate of the US and what Republicans are clearly indicating they want... Not sure what you are on about.
People who get lumped into broad categories don’t all agree on all matters.
You’re rejecting people who self identified as Republicans for not being Republicans.
You can reject the category of Republicans in all situations or zero situations but doing so only some of the time is not a defensible position.
With respect it's also possible you are not as literate as you want to believe
Don't disregard what people tell you they will do because they are "just people"
Project 2025 been admitting their goals for years but they're just people they would never, right?
only politicians are delusional enough to think people will support datacenters in their county
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Find this quite funny overall. In the end Loudoun and Santa Clara get cheap power and lower property taxes than otherwise because they host so many datacenters. It’s pretty good that local policy leads to such good outcomes for people. Huge fan of this structure.
The policy-outcome feedback loop should be tight. People rapidly adapt when that happens.
Fortunately site selection is still possible and construction teams are still well occupied. America’s fortunate to enter a period with such clean industry. Dropping the ball here would have been so foolish.
Readers would appreciate downvoters clarifying their displeasure or disagreement with the above.
Well, at the minimum "Santa Clara gets cheap power because they host so many data centers" reverses the causality. SVP was already cheaper than PG&E before data centers existed at all, and the decent data center buildout hasn't pushed prices down. Santa Clara property taxes are typical for the area.
same holds for VA overall including the DC nexus in Loudoun County: https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/data.php?incfile=/state/seds/...
DCs set up there because power was cheap, train coverage is good (useful for construction), fiber is everywhere, and of course lobbyists and politicians have their hands out all over NoVa