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AI data centres — in SPACE! Why DCs in space can’t work (pivot-to-ai.com)
submitted 3 days ago by dgerard@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Science fiction is fiction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_SaKXM82yg&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20251201-ai-data-centres-in-space-why-dcs-in-space-cant-work - podcast

time: 9 min 27 sec

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[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 16 points 3 days ago

Data centers in space are a tool. You have to know when and how to use them. I'm not saying they're completely useless, but most people do not understand how to avoid the difficult and expensive orbital logistics, power and cooling issues, radiation problems or the slow and complicated networking (unlike me, of course people like me know how to avoid them). Obviously it's ludicrous to suggest space station server farms don't have their uses and I'm not the kind of luddite saying nobody should ever be putting data centers in space, but right now they should really only be used together with terrestrial data centers and not relied on exclusively. That said, it's still early days and we will inevitably be seeing a lot more compute in the orbit.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago

+1, also it's just unrealistic when people say we should stop using orbital data centres. They’re here and we should get used to them, because nothing we do can influence their development. Also, we need to be involved in the space data center industry or we won’t be able to influence their development later.*

*yes, I have heard this in the wild. I have literally heard someone say that there’s nothing we can do about AI and then immediately suggest that we can and should do something about AI.

[-] Seminar2250@awful.systems 3 points 1 day ago

the chair of my cs department at a public university expressed this sentiment

"the cat's out of the bag, now we must teach students to use it responsibly"

BECAUSE THAT HAS WORKED SO WELL BEFORE

(sorry for shouting)

[-] scruiser@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago

My poe detection wasn't sure until the last sentence used the "still early" and "inevitably" lines. Nice.

[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I get what you're saying.

I hate when they make us untangle these linguistic knots. I think this is a motte-and-bailey^1^ situation, like how the oppo respond to AI (LLM) criticism by implying we don't like AI (ML i.e. the old thing that works).

They likewise want datacenters (Big Hot Steaming Shitbox of GPUs...IN SPACE) not datacenters (radiation hardened, multiply-redundant, low-power industrial CPU clusters...IN SPACE)

^1^ ugh sorry having a brain fart and cant think of a better term

Edit: I am reliably informed that I let one go over my head. Apologies!

In my defense, I would be entirely unsurprised if you turned out to be an expert in this stuff lol

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 10 points 2 days ago

I was just riffing on the AI "moderate" talking points. Building a data center in space is prima facie ludicrously stupid and you would need an extremely unusual justification to even consider it. I was pretending to act like a moron who blindly accepts there's probably a serious reason why they make sense just because some dumbass hype man said so.

[-] ozymandias@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago

that /s tag really is useful… i wasn’t sure if you were serious or not

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago

That's a calculated risk I take with deadpan humor. This time I cut it close.

[-] jonhendry@iosdev.space 3 points 3 days ago

@bitofhope

The place for space data centers is in manned space stations to support the work being done there.

[-] burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 days ago

All the venture capitalists who got scammed into funding this:

space is cold

"Data centers on hard mode" is such a good way to put it.

[-] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 2 points 2 days ago

@burble @dgerard this is where Vibe Physics gets you

[-] jonhendry@iosdev.space 4 points 3 days ago

@burble @techtakes

Why not submerge them in a river for far less money.

Microsoft had an underwater datacenter-in-a-container test a while back.

[-] burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 days ago

"How do we cool these things?"

"idk, boil the oceans?"

[-] BurgersMcSlopshot@awful.systems 3 points 3 days ago

I'm surprised lagering caves, except for servers instead of beer hasn't come up yet.

[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Didn't Meta, then Facebook, open a datacenter somewhere in the Arctic circle and leave it exposed to the environmental cold? Until the planet runs out of cold, an eventuality whose impending rapidity I'd rather not ponder, that seems a viable approach.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 4 points 3 days ago

Underwater datacenters make cooling very effective and maintenance nearly impossible, so you have to treat the container data centers essentially disposable. That's only viable with economy of scale big enough to be an xkcd comic punchline. I guess Microsoft found that even they are not quite there yet. Also most computers don't tolerate seawater quite as well as they tolerate air.

[-] jonhendry@iosdev.space 6 points 3 days ago

@bitofhope

Pretty sure space datacenters are also going to be even more disposable.

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 2 points 2 days ago

imagine a $100b GPU data centre with the disposability of a cubesat

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 10 points 3 days ago

Oh yea absolutely. Underwater datacenters have one upside (cooling) and massive downsides (everything else, more or less). Space datacenters trade that upside into yet another downside, make the downsides even bigger and add a few extra downsides for good measure.

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 3 days ago

Cooling in space is an absolute arse. Space is an excellent insulator for heat. That’s why a thermos works. In space, thermal management is job number one. All you can use is radiators. Getting rid of your 200 kilowatts will need about 500 square metres.

To drive home how easy this is to work out, the Codex for the Mass Effect series^1^ explicitly points out that radiation is the only way to cool off in space, and goes into detail on how in-universe spaceships (civilian and military) deal with heat buildup.

BioWare did their homework on this shit for a series of sci-fi RPGs which started in the early days of the Xbox 360 and the PS3. That the startup bros, tech co's and billionaire CEOs pushing this have failed or refused to recognise this shit is goddamn negligence.

So space is a bit hard. A lot of the sci-fi guys suggest oceans! We’ll put the data centres underwater and cooling will be great!

The only way I see that idea working is if humanity works out underwater cities (e.g. Rapture from the original Bioshock) first. That'd make the issue of maintenance easier to deal with, even if getting new parts from the surface would remain a PITA.

^1^ Specifically "Starships: Heat Management", under Ships and Vehicles, in the Secondary Codex"

[-] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 5 points 3 days ago

The tabletop game Attack Vector: Tactical from 2004 also models the need for radiators and risk of overheating.

Science fiction from the 20th century tended to ignore cooling and cosmic rays (the one exception I can recall is Jerry Pournelle's superscience Langston Field) and we know these guys are not up to date even on pop culture or good at reading.

this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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