this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2026
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How hard is it to build orbital data centers, actually? (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by nullify3112@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Editor’s note: … In this article, we discuss the technical challenges of building an orbital data center constellation: launching all of it, dissipating heat in space, dealing with radiation, and addressing latency issues in orbit. Read part one here.

I find the napkin math interesting, especially putting into light that given expected longevity of such satellites, 5 to 7 years, they will have to do 10 to 42 launches per day. SpaceX will need $1.5 to $10 trillions to make it happen. All of that so the slop machine doesn’t have to run into obstacles like democracy ? So it can destroy communities and the environment freely? What are we doing?

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[–] BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I always wondered how we planned for dissipating heat in space to be comparable to dissipating heat on earth. Feels like whatever they're using to handle that heat is going to have to be huge and heavy.

Has to be great for avoiding any legal obligations on how you might handle the data though. Can do whatever you want as long as it stays in space.

[–] Juviz@lemmy.zip 2 points 19 hours ago

You know, I just had a great idea how to dissipate that heat in space. we can use tungsten rods and heat them up, and when they’re too hot and don’t cool down anymore, we just drop them down to earth and should they happen to hit something in China or Russia that’s just a bonus

/S obviously

[–] nullify3112@lemmy.world 3 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

The article goes somewhat in depth about it. Basically, heat dissipation in space is a solved physics problem. It is now in the engineering domain to try to make it more lightweight, efficient, scalable and ultimately cheap. Ars Technica does reference a great video by Scott Manley where he just does the math to figure out how large the heat sink panels need to be. His back of the envelope math leads him to believe that a starlink sized solar panel or something in that order of magnitude will be enough.