Where’s the best place for a datacenter? It’s an increasing problem as the AI buildup continues seemingly without pause. It’s not just a problem of NIMBYism; earthly power grids are having trouble coping, to say nothing of the demand for cooling water. Regulators and environmental groups alike are raising alarms about the impact that powering and cooling these massive AI datacenters will have on our planet.
While Sam Altman fantasizes about fusion power, one obvious response to those who say “think about the planet!” is to ask, “Well, what if we don’t put them on the planet?” Just as Gerard O’Neill asked over 50 years ago when our technology was merely industrial, the question remains:
“Is the surface of a planet really the right place for expanding technological civilization?”
O’Neill’s answer was a resounding “No.” The answer has not changed, even though our technology has. Generative AI is the latest and greatest technology on offer, but it turns out it may be the first one to make the productive jump to Earth Orbit. Indeed, it already has, but more on that later, because you’re probably scoffing at such a pie-in-the-sky idea.
There are three things needed for a datacenter: power, cooling, and connectivity. The people at companies like Starcloud, Inc, formally Lumen Orbit, make a good, solid case that all of these can be more easily met in orbit– one that includes hard numbers.
Sure, there’s also more radiation on orbit than here on earth, but our electronics turn out to be a lot more resilient than was once thought, as all the cell-phone cubesats have proven. Starcloud budgets only 1 kg of sheilding per kW of compute power in their whitepaper, as an example. If we can provide power, cooling, and connectivity, the radiation environment won’t be a showstopper.
Continue reading “Space-Based Datacenters Take The Cloud Into Orbit” →
