Just confirming what I’ve suspected: the point of the space datacenter thing is to keep the tools of oppression out of reach of angry mobs with torches and pitchforks.
You could burn the ground stations down, but they’re all around the world, and all it takes is 1 to route the data to via the inter satellite laser links. You’d definitely add latency though taking out ground stations near you.
And I don’t know if the space datacenter is quite as untouchable as he thinks…
It will obviously be in a very low orbit, because that’s the easiest to reach and construct…
Maybe it would be within reach of some fairly advanced amateur rocketry? We don’t have to reach a stable orbit, which makes things much easier. Just shoot it straight up, with much less velocity needed than for orbit. In fact, the speed difference between our rocket and his orbital datacenter will be very useful – that speed difference will lead to a very energetic impact.
Maybe it could be vulnerable to some directed energy weapons? Very strong lasers, highly directional microwave beams, that sort of thing.
There’s always hacking. For extra irony bonus, use Space Grok to vibe code the tools you need to hack its orbital control systems. Then you can de-orbit it or collide it with other objects in orbit.
Can we please not destroy objects in orbit? It’s already crowded up there without untrackable debris. Deorbiting is much safer and probably easier, considering the precision needed to hit anthying, especially because those satellites would have station keeping thrusters to evade other satellites.
It would probably be easier to launch shrapnel into their orbit than try to hit one, and let them begin to cascade into each other. The dishes are so low (or at least starlink is), that there’d be no real kessler risk since it’d all fall back down to earth in 5 years or less.
Oh absolutely. Waiting and pouncing on some vulnerability would be the safe bet. Maybe blind their sensors or command and control uplink radios with lasers or microwaves, not damage them directly.
It will obviously be in a very low orbit, because that’s the easiest to reach and construct…
Well, for a bunch of reasons, these space data centers probably won’t be at very low orbits. First and foremost, very low orbits like the ones starlink uses experience a lot of atmospheric drag. With the huge solar arrays these data centers will need, that high drag environment is a killer. Going just a bit farther out would significantly reduce that drag. Also, latency isn’t a huge concern with space data centers, so very low orbits aren’t required. Lastly, since those low orbits are so highly valuable and contested, it just doesn’t make sense to put something there that doesn’t need to be there.
TLDR: Space data center orbits are likely to be somewhere between 500 - 1000 km altitudes.
And yes, that’s in untouchable range for anything but advanced militaries.
What it’s not untouchable to is legislation. That’s the practical way to fight it.
I really hope they don’t go into the 700-1000km range with something of this scale if it actually happens as thats where a real risk of debris staying in orbit for hundreds or thousands of years starts to happen if something catastrophic happens to the constellation.
China blew up a satellite in a test in the 800km area and it’ll be there for hundreds of years.
Yeah, that’s a valid point. And yeah, that’s totally where they’re gonna put them. They’re gonna be huge, delicate targets…
I’m generally pro space, I think all the massive advances in space flight in these last couple of decades has been truly amazing. That said, I wish I had a more positive way to spin this, but yeah, that’s a serious concern. That’s bad.
It won’t happen, but if globally we could agree to put a moratorium on large constellations in those orbits until we have more experience with constellations in the really low orbits, that would at least help and give us more time to learn. Without everyone agreeing though, someone else will just be like, MINE and fill it anyway.
Edit: like lets see what happens as starlink becomes even bigger and moves into 10s of thousands, and kupier appears etc before moving up higher.
Very low orbits are less of a concern, though. Because if the worst happens, they and the vast majority of their debris will be slowed by atmospheric drag and fall relatively quickly.
The following is a reference and spoiler for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
spoiler
What we need to do is hijack a submersible fortress, steal the prototype railgun designed for stealth-launching nuclear warheads, and mount the rail gun on the fortress so you can guard it with your battle-harem of cyborg soldier women. Bonus points for getting your arm chopped off by a ninja, replacing it with a transplant, getting possessed by the donor’s ghost because you were unknowingly the child of a medium, but then getting the transplant arm replaced by a prosthetic and hypnotizing yourself into thinking you’re still possessed because reasons… Oh yeah, point the railgun at the orbital data center while all this is going on to ragebait the clone sibling of the arm donor I guess!
Indeed. I had to remind people that this was the actual third/fourth act of a flagship title and I was among the many people who took it very seriously because it “changed gaming forever, it was art!”
I mean, I still love Metal Gear Solid, but we have to be able to see it with some objectivity
A variant of the first bullet is another option: put something in orbit going in the opposite direction, then release a few dozen ball bearings in the path of Elon’s data center. Closing speed is something on the order of 100 km/hr. That should do just fine.
Trying to put something in reverse orbit is even more difficult and requires a much more powerful rocket. Normal orbits follow the same direction as the earth’s rotation, because that allows you to take advantage of the earth’s already-existing rotational speed to give you a head start on achieving enough speed to reach orbit.
Putting something into reverse orbit (while possible) is significantly more difficult, because now the earth’s rotation is working against you. It has been done a few times, but it’s significantly more expensive and difficult to achieve, which is going to be a problem for amateurs trying to shoot down a space station.
Anyway, the difference between orbital velocity and a (relatively stationary) rocket that has been fired straight upward will be plenty of speed difference to cause lots of damage on impact.
Good thing the whole idea makes no sense, because repairs are impossible, you can only vent heat in infrared, you have to use expensive rockets to get them up there, and if they’re in LEO, they’ll fall back down to earth. Oh, and there’s more likelyhood that bits get flipped from all of the high energy particles up there.
It’ll just make LLMs at scale even more infeasible.
To run one rack of GPUs they will be about 100 square meters of solar panels and 30 square meters of radiators. That’s about 130 kilowatts of compute power. To get a gigawatt multiply that by 6,000. Musk is claiming he wants to send terawatts up to there.
The numbers didnt make sense for his tunnel thing either, but thats because he has never been an engineer but a hype-man who manipulates governments and markets for proffit.
The stats you listed are close to what 1 satellite would be if memory serves.
But when he talks about sending terrawatts up there, he’s talking about having a moon base manufacturing them and launching them into orbit with a mass acceleator, so if we’re doing that… ramping up some solar/radiator manufacturing capacity isn’t as far fetched. Were fully into sci-fi land at that point.
Yeah it’s tricky, given the pushback people are showing against datacenter construction, the issues around power, the vulnerability to attack… The space data center idea is starting to become more attractive to big tech over time, not less.
Initially, everyone agreed that the numbers just don’t add up, there’s no way it could be economical. But then these terrestrial datacenters started getting a lot of bad press, everyone was concerned about the environmental impact, about the strain on the energy grid, about water usage. All of a sudden the space plan is seeming less crazy.
and if they’re in LEO, they’ll fall back down to earth. Oh, and there’s more likelyhood that bits get flipped from all of the high energy particles up there.
You’re thinking about the right things here, these are major issues! But, they can largely avoid serious problems here. Over 500 km, there’s a lot less drag and these aren’t just going to fall out of the sky. And under 1000 km the earth’s magnetic field still mostly protects them from high energy particles. They will still definitely be more exposed to high energy particles causing random bit flips, but it’s going to be in a totally manageable range.
Giant AI datacenters will truly never be an efficient or wise use of resources, at least in my opinion, it’s just a largely stupid endeavor. But for better or worse, I expect we will be seeing some of these space based data centers in the near future. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how economically sustainable they are…
Bad press doesn’t mean they can start losing even more money on space data centers (which are going to be incredibly inefficient and costly). They already do not make a profit, they’re all deep in the red.
Drag is not the only problem (even though these would definitely be LEO, it is just even more expensive to not have them in LEO and it increases latency), nor are bit flips. The biggest issue will continue to be heat. If you haven’t been to a data center before, you may be surprised at how much heat they generate. I’ve only been to non-LLM data centers, and the heat in the warm aisles was unbearable.
And that’s without the sun heating the exterior to incredible amounts. You cannot use contact to dump heat into space.
You might also be surprised at how much e-waste data centers generate, especially LLM-geared data centers. They obliterate hardware, even with optimal cooling, and that hardware requires constant replacement. How are they going to manage that?
Also, unless they use nuclear (which would drastically increase costs and add heat) they’re going to need gigantic solar arrays, much bigger than the IIS’ array.
I think CorrectAlias meant that heat transfer by direct contact, which is how we cool things in general, is not available, making cooling a datacenter cluster in space actual science fiction.
Just confirming what I’ve suspected: the point of the space datacenter thing is to keep the tools of oppression out of reach of angry mobs with torches and pitchforks.
Data center in space: untouchable
Strictly necessary ground radio station to get any usable amount of data to and from said data center: still flammable
You wouldn’t say untouchable if you’d seen me with a slingshot.
You could burn the ground stations down, but they’re all around the world, and all it takes is 1 to route the data to via the inter satellite laser links. You’d definitely add latency though taking out ground stations near you.
And I don’t know if the space datacenter is quite as untouchable as he thinks…
It will obviously be in a very low orbit, because that’s the easiest to reach and construct…
Maybe it would be within reach of some fairly advanced amateur rocketry? We don’t have to reach a stable orbit, which makes things much easier. Just shoot it straight up, with much less velocity needed than for orbit. In fact, the speed difference between our rocket and his orbital datacenter will be very useful – that speed difference will lead to a very energetic impact.
Maybe it could be vulnerable to some directed energy weapons? Very strong lasers, highly directional microwave beams, that sort of thing.
There’s always hacking. For extra irony bonus, use Space Grok to vibe code the tools you need to hack its orbital control systems. Then you can de-orbit it or collide it with other objects in orbit.
Can we please not destroy objects in orbit? It’s already crowded up there without untrackable debris. Deorbiting is much safer and probably easier, considering the precision needed to hit anthying, especially because those satellites would have station keeping thrusters to evade other satellites.
Great way to enforce a moratorium on new large-scale projects in LEO for a few years.
We have had missles that you can lob from a high altitude aircraft, and hit a satellite, since the 80s.
It would probably be easier to launch shrapnel into their orbit than try to hit one, and let them begin to cascade into each other. The dishes are so low (or at least starlink is), that there’d be no real kessler risk since it’d all fall back down to earth in 5 years or less.
The latter two would be way easier.
You’d think… But a laser or microwave emitter that big would also be quite an undertaking.
Honestly, hacking seems the most likely option to succeed on a small scale.
Oh absolutely. Waiting and pouncing on some vulnerability would be the safe bet. Maybe blind their sensors or command and control uplink radios with lasers or microwaves, not damage them directly.
Well, for a bunch of reasons, these space data centers probably won’t be at very low orbits. First and foremost, very low orbits like the ones starlink uses experience a lot of atmospheric drag. With the huge solar arrays these data centers will need, that high drag environment is a killer. Going just a bit farther out would significantly reduce that drag. Also, latency isn’t a huge concern with space data centers, so very low orbits aren’t required. Lastly, since those low orbits are so highly valuable and contested, it just doesn’t make sense to put something there that doesn’t need to be there.
TLDR: Space data center orbits are likely to be somewhere between 500 - 1000 km altitudes.
And yes, that’s in untouchable range for anything but advanced militaries.
What it’s not untouchable to is legislation. That’s the practical way to fight it.
I really hope they don’t go into the 700-1000km range with something of this scale if it actually happens as thats where a real risk of debris staying in orbit for hundreds or thousands of years starts to happen if something catastrophic happens to the constellation.
China blew up a satellite in a test in the 800km area and it’ll be there for hundreds of years.
Yeah, that’s a valid point. And yeah, that’s totally where they’re gonna put them. They’re gonna be huge, delicate targets…
I’m generally pro space, I think all the massive advances in space flight in these last couple of decades has been truly amazing. That said, I wish I had a more positive way to spin this, but yeah, that’s a serious concern. That’s bad.
It won’t happen, but if globally we could agree to put a moratorium on large constellations in those orbits until we have more experience with constellations in the really low orbits, that would at least help and give us more time to learn. Without everyone agreeing though, someone else will just be like, MINE and fill it anyway.
Edit: like lets see what happens as starlink becomes even bigger and moves into 10s of thousands, and kupier appears etc before moving up higher.
Very low orbits are less of a concern, though. Because if the worst happens, they and the vast majority of their debris will be slowed by atmospheric drag and fall relatively quickly.
Thats why I said we should do it in the very low orbits for awhile before going to the 700-1000km range.
800km is already in the hundreds of years range.
How to make space worse and everyone hate you - 101
Well, maybe don’t fuck over most of the population so much that they see no progress as preferable to progress that only benefits the oppressors.
The following is a reference and spoiler for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
spoiler
What we need to do is hijack a submersible fortress, steal the prototype railgun designed for stealth-launching nuclear warheads, and mount the rail gun on the fortress so you can guard it with your battle-harem of cyborg soldier women. Bonus points for getting your arm chopped off by a ninja, replacing it with a transplant, getting possessed by the donor’s ghost because you were unknowingly the child of a medium, but then getting the transplant arm replaced by a prosthetic and hypnotizing yourself into thinking you’re still possessed because reasons… Oh yeah, point the railgun at the orbital data center while all this is going on to ragebait the clone sibling of the arm donor I guess!
Easy!
Man, those games got wild… I mean, they started pretty wild. But yeah.
Indeed. I had to remind people that this was the actual third/fourth act of a flagship title and I was among the many people who took it very seriously because it “changed gaming forever, it was art!”
I mean, I still love Metal Gear Solid, but we have to be able to see it with some objectivity
It’ll be very touchable while being built.
A variant of the first bullet is another option: put something in orbit going in the opposite direction, then release a few dozen ball bearings in the path of Elon’s data center. Closing speed is something on the order of 100 km/hr. That should do just fine.
“Kessler” bullets, amirite?
I like yours better than my suggestion because it has a sort of “Home Alone in Space” vibe to it!
Trying to put something in reverse orbit is even more difficult and requires a much more powerful rocket. Normal orbits follow the same direction as the earth’s rotation, because that allows you to take advantage of the earth’s already-existing rotational speed to give you a head start on achieving enough speed to reach orbit.
Putting something into reverse orbit (while possible) is significantly more difficult, because now the earth’s rotation is working against you. It has been done a few times, but it’s significantly more expensive and difficult to achieve, which is going to be a problem for amateurs trying to shoot down a space station.
Anyway, the difference between orbital velocity and a (relatively stationary) rocket that has been fired straight upward will be plenty of speed difference to cause lots of damage on impact.
deleted by creator
Good thing the whole idea makes no sense, because repairs are impossible, you can only vent heat in infrared, you have to use expensive rockets to get them up there, and if they’re in LEO, they’ll fall back down to earth. Oh, and there’s more likelyhood that bits get flipped from all of the high energy particles up there.
It’ll just make LLMs at scale even more infeasible.
Just FYI the rockets won’t be expensive if this plan ends up working.
The only way this works beyond a tech demo, is if Starship works.
If Starship works as planned (big if), the marginal cost to orbit will round down to the cost of fuel to launch over the lifetime of the rocket.
Starship being fully reusable and working is going to be a mind boggling change in what access to space looks like and means.
To run one rack of GPUs they will be about 100 square meters of solar panels and 30 square meters of radiators. That’s about 130 kilowatts of compute power. To get a gigawatt multiply that by 6,000. Musk is claiming he wants to send terawatts up to there.
The numbers didnt make sense for his tunnel thing either, but thats because he has never been an engineer but a hype-man who manipulates governments and markets for proffit.
The stats you listed are close to what 1 satellite would be if memory serves.
But when he talks about sending terrawatts up there, he’s talking about having a moon base manufacturing them and launching them into orbit with a mass acceleator, so if we’re doing that… ramping up some solar/radiator manufacturing capacity isn’t as far fetched. Were fully into sci-fi land at that point.
Yeah it’s tricky, given the pushback people are showing against datacenter construction, the issues around power, the vulnerability to attack… The space data center idea is starting to become more attractive to big tech over time, not less.
Initially, everyone agreed that the numbers just don’t add up, there’s no way it could be economical. But then these terrestrial datacenters started getting a lot of bad press, everyone was concerned about the environmental impact, about the strain on the energy grid, about water usage. All of a sudden the space plan is seeming less crazy.
You’re thinking about the right things here, these are major issues! But, they can largely avoid serious problems here. Over 500 km, there’s a lot less drag and these aren’t just going to fall out of the sky. And under 1000 km the earth’s magnetic field still mostly protects them from high energy particles. They will still definitely be more exposed to high energy particles causing random bit flips, but it’s going to be in a totally manageable range.
Giant AI datacenters will truly never be an efficient or wise use of resources, at least in my opinion, it’s just a largely stupid endeavor. But for better or worse, I expect we will be seeing some of these space based data centers in the near future. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how economically sustainable they are…
Bad press doesn’t mean they can start losing even more money on space data centers (which are going to be incredibly inefficient and costly). They already do not make a profit, they’re all deep in the red.
Drag is not the only problem (even though these would definitely be LEO, it is just even more expensive to not have them in LEO and it increases latency), nor are bit flips. The biggest issue will continue to be heat. If you haven’t been to a data center before, you may be surprised at how much heat they generate. I’ve only been to non-LLM data centers, and the heat in the warm aisles was unbearable.
And that’s without the sun heating the exterior to incredible amounts. You cannot use contact to dump heat into space.
You might also be surprised at how much e-waste data centers generate, especially LLM-geared data centers. They obliterate hardware, even with optimal cooling, and that hardware requires constant replacement. How are they going to manage that?
Also, unless they use nuclear (which would drastically increase costs and add heat) they’re going to need gigantic solar arrays, much bigger than the IIS’ array.
Yeah, when you heat something, it emits infrared. Kind of the nature of hot things.
I think CorrectAlias meant that heat transfer by direct contact, which is how we cool things in general, is not available, making cooling a datacenter cluster in space actual science fiction.
This is exactly what I meant, thanks.
There’s always lasers…