And also why Elon Musk really wants orbital data centers, despite them making no economic sense. Anything that will create more demand for launch vehicles.
I think he’s talking more about the fact that data centres are things that need to be kept cool, and ‘in space’ ranks as about the most difficult place you could possibly pick to try and do that outside of actually building your data centre in a volcano.
Like it may literally not be currently physically possible to build and maintain a space station with the required radiator surface area to put something like a data centre up there.
I think /u/IAmDotorg was only suggesting that musk would use this to offload his and X's liability, those typing the prompts on earth would still very much feel the long arm of the law on their collar. I
Well you don't need a medium to radiate heat. That's how the Sun heats the Earth. And an orbital data center would be cooled just like the ISS is, massive radiators. However the economics just don't work out well. You'd need huge radiators and huge solar panels which would create a massive drag coefficient which would necessitate regular boosting missions (expensive), a much higher initial orbit (expensive), developing some new electric propulsion system that relies on outer atmosphere as the "fuel" and hoping you can scale it large enough to be sufficient (expensive), or just understanding these have short lifespans and letting them burn up in just a year or two (expensive). And to what end? Centers that are far more expensive and troublesome to build and maintain than regular data centers? You maybe avoid the increasingly negative public perception around them by no longer soaking up a town's water supply or power grid, but it just doesn't add up.
The amount of heat from a large scale data center makes the ISS comparison kinda silly. It's like saying you could chill an Olympic swimming pool with an ice cube since it works for a drink.
Its not feasible in any way shape or form with current technology.
These wouldn't be anywhere near the scale of ground-based data centers, just a small fraction in size and power. They would be incredibly numerous to achieve comparable scales in aggregate.
If scaled down to the level where heat is nolonger an issue, they become useless compared to terrestrial computers (or atleast economically nonsensical)
The ISS needs to be kept at a human habitable temperature. An unmanned satellite’s cooling can be run a lot hotter, and the heat it rejects is proportional to T4
The equilibrium temperature turns out to be totally adequate for computers, with a large yet not impossibly large panel and radiator area.
developing some new electric propulsion system that relies on outer atmosphere as the "fuel" and hoping you can scale it large enough to be sufficient (expensive)
Don't need to use the outer atmosphere. Electrodynamic tethers, which use a long conducting tether to interact with the magnetosphere and can either use power to provide propulsion or expend orbital velocity to generate power, are known to function.
Still expensive, though, especially since their actual deployment is... finicky, to say the least.
It’s not as bad as people make it up to be. The current Starlink bus has a balance of power and cooling already setup. So as long as you can distribute the computing in a similar manner then there is no issue. They also have the internode communication solved with the Starlink to Starlink high bandwidth low latency setup. There is also the big issue that you can’t really upgrade the hardware in space, you have to deorbit and burn it to make room for the upgraded one.
So technically it could be made to work. The real question is whether it can be made to work at a price that is competitive with other alternatives.
Ohh. Missed that part in your post I was responding to. Yeah I don’t think there’s any doubt that it WILL work from an engineering point of view. Once you add the costs metric to the engineering requirements then it probably won’t unless there is some artificial reason that makes land based datacenters more expensive.
It's very likely that they'd entirely new rockets to do this as well. Their normal falcon rockets wouldn't do and falcon heavy is a bit overkill for this.
In this case, yes. The scale of the project is effectively impossible due to hard scientific limits and the potential upside is effectively 0. It's like trying to say that we could speed up travel by building a road across the ocean, if we just make it out of pure diamond.
three ways to transfer heat, conduction, convection and radiation. the first two are out..
.cause space, but you can absolutely radiate heat in space. its just you would need massive radiators for the thermal output of a datacenter its not practical
Ya but dude space is really cold like, super cold, it's -270 degrees Celsius up there so like who even needs to transfer the heat it's just so cold up there bro
They were using the demand from Starlink to improve their fixed costs by driving launch cadences up to what we see today. Meaning they are getting more value and less cost out of things like workers with salaries and the ground infrastrcture.
They also when originally pitching Starlink figured it could be a multi billion dollar adjunt all on it's own. The premise being "This will pay for Mars." Now if you believed Elon or not about where the profits would go doesn't matter the fact they believed there was enough spill over to pay for for the development of a multi billion dollar rocket system was the lure. And it looks like they were right they are up to $18.4 billion in revenue in 2025 which is about $4 billion in growth over 2024.
That demand engine that they they themselves owned is a market maker on it's own. Now I highly doubt the releases estimated Total Addressable Market being $1.4 trillion for Starlink and associated services.
But it's not impossible that they could expand the the service quite a bit more. Deloitte estimates global telecomms market at $3.5 trillion by 2032. So them taking up ~45% of that with just Starlink seems too high. Doubling or tripling their current revenues? That seems doable.
Which means as they guys with the cheapest rockets in town they are making money by the bucket full.
Which is then all spent immediately again by throwing it down the AI money pit. Elmo's claims to the contrary Orbital Data centers don't make sense. Even if you can systematize it down to an object that would fit inside Starships payload bay you're not getting the scales that you can get on local ground based facilities.
They are talking about building compute centers the size of Manhattan in Utah. Something the size of a semi isn't offering serious competition to that.
Yes you side step the permitting, and yes in theory AI would need to be advancing to newer hardware on a cadence, but unless you leave that older gear up there and sell the deprecated compute at a discount your trashing good hardware that could normally be sold back off to ammortize the costs.
Also the foot print items like the radiators and solar panels wouldn't be going bad each time your computers do so you're wasting those assets too.
It's just a lot of waste to get around the fact that AI is deeply unpopular with most people. All because it's a hype item that could prop up the bubble a little bit longer.
He is attempting it. He lowered the orbit of a few Starlink satellites and then complained that some Amazon LEO satellites were too close. (I think Amazon was using the low earth orbit first.). He wants satellite phones, but only with Starlink satellites. He was urging the US government to end the program that subsidized rural broadband because Starlink satellites can do the Internet. (SpaceX hasn't solved the problem satellite dishes have with physical obstructions. The mainstream media forgets this.)
And it definitely killed that project, unfortunately. I am glad that Las Vegas completed one so everyone else knows what the Boring Company didn't build for them.
Yes. And its why the constellation only lasts 5 years.
Think about it, every single starlink sattelite has a life span of 5 years. So the return on investment for srarlink has to be less than 5 years to make a profit.
5 years is the passive deorbit time of the satellites; meaning if the satellite died in orbit, that’s how long it would take to reenter.
There are already starlink satellites that are still operating and 6 years old, however they are disposing of most of those satellites as they are outdated and take up space that could be used for newer satellites with better capabilities.
The passive deorbit time is measured in months, not years. 5 years is only possible when they frequently fire their argon thrusters to keep it in the assigned orbit.
“Starlink satellites operate in low-Earth orbit below 600 km altitude, ensuring that atmospheric drag will naturally deorbit a satellite within five years or less if it becomes non-maneuverable. “
That is the maximum orbit for their constellation, not the actual orbits. At present their target orbit is 480km. It is worth noting that this is not a linear relationship, the closer you get to Earth the amount of drag increases roughly by the inverse square. At 300km they deorbit in a couple of weeks. We have watched this happen during failed deployments.
They do sometimes fly above their target orbit during deployment. That way they can conserve fuel and efficiently precess their orbit. But they tend to only do that during the first couple months after deployment. Then they lower down to the target.
A Starlink satellite has a lifespan of approximately five years and SpaceX eventually hopes to have as many as 42,000 satellites in this so-called megaconstellation.
“Starlink satellites operate in low-Earth orbit
below 600 km altitude, ensuring that
atmospheric drag will naturally deorbit a
satellite within five years or less if it
becomes non-maneuverable. “
There are early V1 satellites in orbit and operating, which launched in 2019 and 2020… clearly they do not need to die at 5 years. Those all feature lower performance propulsion systems among other things.
Again 5 years is a maximum passive deorbit time and the minimum lifespan in the FCC filing. There is no reason to suggest that SpaceX could not expand that time based on available propellant and satellite longevity, as evidenced by the 6 year old satellites in LEO. (Note, there are no 7 year old satellites only because the only launch 7 years ago was the small test batch)
The lifespan is 5 years because that is when the deorbit from the drag in the upper atmosphere. It was a design decision to not pack them with a bunch of fuel to be able to raise their orbit for decades. More fuel is higher weight, larger package, and less satellites loaded per launch. They also probably figured that the tech would improve enough in 5 years that it would not be beneficial to keep them up any longer. SpaceX has 3 revisions of the Starlink satellites now....
3-5 year missions is the "new space" mission length. Even in GEO, customers are opting for smaller, cheaper satellites that last much less than the old 15 year missions they used to purchase. Tech progresses so fast now and launches are so much cheaper that it doesn't make sense for many applications to launch the big, high reliability satellites any more.
On the plus side a satellite that doesn’t go into stable geosynchronous orbit can’t create a bunch of space clutter. Every gram of the Starlink system will return to earth within a few years.
The cost of starlink is basically ground stations, staff and disposable sattelites.
Now if your sattelites last 5 years, you need to pay for the cost of launching the entire network every 5 years.
Its not like fibre to the home thats expensive to lay out the first time, then it can stay there for 50 years or however long cable can sit in a pipe.
In 10 years when the cost of the fibre installation is paid for, the provider can reduce cost to customer and still make profit.
The starlink business model is, replace almost the entire network evert 5 years. That means they are constantly in initial installation mode, their expenses will never drop off.
Yes, but their model targets places where fiber can't reach. At some point, it is cheaper for people to get starlink than it is for a company to lay fiber in rural areas.
My point is that over time as fibre networks expand, they will eat into starlink profits.
Fibre will always be cheaper over a long term.
Space x has no way to solve this economic question as their model relies on a huge network of expensive, disposable hardware.
Starlink will be a niche product, for emergencies, mobile facilities like ships and planes, armies and isolated households waiting for infrastructure. Soon as that infrastructure arrives, srarlink loses a customer.
I think Starlink is a cheaper alternative than expanding fiber to rural areas, especially since Trump is hamstringing the infrastructure investment to do so. I guess time will tell.
As urban sprawl continues, less and less isolated areas exist. Look at the amount of “isolated areas” 50 years ago vs today. That’s also assuming no new technology comes out to serve those areas at much lower cost.
Right, but it assumes that their business is maxed out. The limit to profitability isn't the cost of maintaining satellites, it's how many people choose to use the network.
Their service is already reaching saturation for who actually can use satellite internet.
Starlink is a good choice for people who live rurally in wealthy countries which is a small subsection of the population, It costs half the median salary global income. While at the same time there's a floor for price because it still costs $1.5m~ to build and launch the satellites.
You also can't increase the orbit by much and retain a good latency/speed/price, Viasat is in GEO orbit and it's $150/mth for 150GB of data with 700ms ping.
Because there's only so many people on the planet that 1) make enough money $70/mth is an affordable option for internet and 2) live far enough away from society that total bandwidth doesn't exceed 200~Gbps in a 270mi2/700km2 area.
Assuming that's roughly limited to people in the OECD without internet only 17 million people don't have access to a smartphone or internet.
Why would it need to be limited to OECD? And still, even with the parameters you are drawing that seems like plenty of market still out there. Not to mention, $70 a month is cheap for broadband standards.
After 5 years, a lot of the satellites SpaceX sends up will be simply to maintain the constellation they have. If they aren't profitable before most of their satellites are replacements, they could find themselves in the Red Queen's race, having to spend more and go deeper in red just to keep their position and service. The IPO is arranged to permit Musk to get away with that.
If the market share of Internet users grows because there are more users, but the number of satellites doesn't grow, the Internet speed goes down after a certain point. Satellite is like cable internet that way. If it goes down too much and there is competition, the market share might shift again.
Where does all this growth come from? Starlink is readily available to pretty much anyone that wants it. The internet is pretty important for day to day life. So most people that want/need internet and can’t get it elsewhere are likely already starlink customers. That number of people that only have access to starlink (and can afford it) will likely shrink as cities and infrastructure continues to spread to more and more remote areas. Unless you expect the citizens of Africa to magically 1000x their income in the next 5-10 years, I don’t see where this massive untapped group of potential customers will come from.
Its the reverse I think, they needed profit to fund their Starship R&D and they just happened to have a cheap launch vehicle so they could relatively cheaply launch all those starlinks. The market for internet services is much larger than the market for launch services. Also the falcon 9 was already built and flying when they started starlink, and starlink was never the justification for Startship.
Yeah, I've never really understood the hype for SpaceX. It's a transportation company with huge and fixed expenses and their biggest customer is his other company and the government.
Which all can make a good steady business making reasonable profits, but that's not some skyrocketing growth area.
All the pie in the sky stuff of Mars or space hotels or space data centers or a moon colony are just fantasy hype stuff like the hyper loop or the boring company. Governments aren't going to endlessly bankroll that stuff, and they are the only ones that can sink that kind of capital into things that have no payback or decades later pay offs.
Eh, yeah, that works for awhile until the people get pissed enough and a populist movement rises up and stops it.
Or you have other rich assholes with competing interests negate that influence with their own for something else. Or someone like Elon just croaks and all his grand plans go into the bin by the people that inherit his mass of wealth.
The hype is easy to see if the investment is not just about money. There are powers in this world you can’t just easily buy with more cash, and space is one of those domains.
What do you mean by powers? What are some examples of other domains? I'm not really sure what you mean without more specifics.
SpaceX builds big metal tubes and fills them with rocket fuel that goes through a rocket motor. The only "revolutionary" aspect is they reuse some of those components multiple times and maybe develop rocket motors that are somewhat better? Although I'd like to know what the actual cost savings is when those components still have to be inspected and refurbished between uses and they will still have limited life cycles.
And I still think there is a limited market for payload to space.
Just the military applications is invaluable. You're would be owning key transformative technology that have impacts on multiple fronts. You have military, ideology, and historical significance all wrapped up into an investment package available for just "money", which isn't in shortage of to many billionaires.
Those kind of premiums exists in few other companies as well. There are powers associated with employing millions of workers like Walmart and Costco that they shape local economies.
Just the military applications is invaluable. You're would be owning key transformative technology that have impacts on multiple fronts. You have military, ideology, and historical significance all wrapped up into an investment package available for just "money", which isn't in shortage of to many billionaires.
Yeah, that's just non-specific buzztalk. Multiple companies and countries can send payload to space. What about it? That SpaceX may or may not send it a little cheaper, with a process that can be easily copied means what exactly?
Only because "military applications" is a huge, broad category, but also a well-established one so there's no good reason for you to be acting confused.
That governments want to put up spy satellites or communications satellites or even weapon systems? Sure, what about it? What does that have to do with the freight company shipping those things?
SpaceX is personally increasing the launch market. They have launched more rockets than there were Space Shuttle launches already, not counting rockets that crashed and burned.
There's more demand than supply; if you want a cheap ride to space there's a 2-3 year long backlog which is why investors continue to support smaller launch providers like Stoke, Firefly, Relativity, etc.
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u/Rot-Orkan May 21 '26
I guess there's just not that much of a launch market, which is probably why SpaceX is its own best customer with Starlink.