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Why put data centers in space?
(mander.xyz)
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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
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There's a whole lot of answers in here saying cooling is impossible or super hard, and that people whose literal job is building satellites haven't thought of this. Or that the people whose literal job is building satellites haven't though about all sorts of other basic stuff like "you can't do maintenance on satellites" or "there's radiation in space" or whatnot.
Yes, they've thought of all those things. Those aren't useful answers
The main advantages continuous high-power solar energy, different regulations being in play (it's "outside the regulatory environment), and in the case of SpaceX it provides synergy with their own rocket launch business. They're creating their own demand, allowing everything to be cheaper in bulk.
Yes, it's to "raise the stock value." Isn't that why companies do anything? Doing a thing that produces value is going to raise the value of the stock of the company doing it.
That's where you're wrong, this is like the hyperloop or solar roadways, where all of the experts agree it's a dumb idea but you have a rich person trying to sell that to the public with the promise that they'll solve the issues by the time they get to production.
You can't cool things in space effectively, the only way things lose heat in space is through radiation. According to Wikipedia the radiators expel from 100 to 350 W per square meter. My PC generates more heat than that, imagine a data center. A quick Google tells me it's 5-15kW per rack or 40-60kW per AI rack. Let's imagine an AI data center, a single rack produces 50kW, so you need 140 square meters per rack. To put this in perspective the space station could host one rack if we removed everything else that produces heat from inside. So you need a megastructure just to host one rack, that will become obsolete in a couple years.
It's not feasible, it's just as stupid an idea as a vacuum tube for trains, and brought to you by the same person too.