Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.
Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.
The article, written by a former NASA engineer and Google employee, strongly argues against building datacenters in space, deeming it an "absolutely terrible idea." It systematically details the severe challenges, including the impracticality of generating sufficient power (solar arrays would need to be massive for even a small number of GPUs), the immense difficulty of thermal regulation in a vacuum, the devastating effects of space radiation on standard electronics requiring costly and low-performance specialized hardware, and the significant limitations of communication bandwidth to Earth. The author concludes that space-based datacenters would be disproportionately expensive, technically formidable, and ultimately yield mediocre performance compared to Earth-based solutions.
Note
it feels like the author has a "chip" on their shoulder!
i did enjoy the hypothetical of powering a few hundred GPUs in space. it will be quite the challenge.
while they make a convincing argument that putting up a datacenter in space using today's technology and earthly data center designs are more headache than it's worth, i don't think the conversation is over.
these are problems to be solved, should we deem them worthy of solving.
but perhaps today isn't that day...
Published
Summary
Image
