by Dan Moren
Are orbital data centers economically viable?
From Eric Berger at Ars Technica, the first of a three-part series about orbital data centers. This first part focuses largely on economics, but also touches upon issues of the environment, the obliteration of the night sky, and more. It’s a really fascinating read.
“This is not physically impossible; it’s only a question of whether this is a rational thing to scale up economically,” [engineer Andrew] McCalip said. “The answer is it’s really close. And if you own both sides of the equation, SpaceX and xAI, it’s not a terrible place to be. I wouldn’t bet against Elon.”
Yet betting on Elon also requires a giant leap of faith.
The third part of this series will dive deeper into detailed cost estimates, but in terms of round numbers, the bare-bones cost of deploying 1 million satellites is more than a trillion dollars. SpaceX’s two biggest previous projects to date, the hyper-ambitious Starlink and Starship programs, each required on the order of $10 billion up front. So in terms of scope and cost, orbital data centers are two orders of magnitude larger.
The part that has me curious, but isn’t really addressed in the story, is future-proofing. Companies like Nvidia are kicking out new chips at such a rate that the processors you send in to orbit will almost certainly be outdated by the time they’re operational. Will that be enough to offset the perceived gains? Are we constantly going to be launching new satellites? What happens to the old one? What if the AI bubble bursts? All fertile ground for a near-future sci-fi story, methinks, if not near-future non-fiction.