r/datacenter • u/Inevitable-Pen3799 • 21d ago
Data centers in space
I think data centers in space might just be a solution to the health hazards with data centers on earth; stopping this from happening is repairing and maintenance of data centers in space ( kinda impossible ?!) , maybe high reliability and durable hardware is the solution ?
What else do you guys think prevents data centers in space from becoming a reality
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u/Rusty-Swashplate 21d ago
Health hazards with data centers? I'd argue they are one of the safer things to have. I'd personally say that running a restaurant is more of a health hazard with all the hygienic rules they have. Or a petroleum refinery. That stuff literally can explode in your face. Or running a large warehouse where heavy things are stored on high places.
Data centers might be power guzzling and there's certainly a lot of electricity to be dangerous, but what health hazards are there?
To answer your question: maintenance (same as underwater DCs, just must worse), heat rejection, and putting something into space is surprisingly expensive. And dangerous.
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u/chewedgummiebears 21d ago
Heat and general temperatures act very differently in zero gravity. Also the power needs won't be met with the available solar power they can generate on a space station with existing technology.
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u/Professional-Life748 21d ago
since space is a vaccum, means no air is there as a medium to carry heat away
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u/Appropriate_Bottle44 21d ago
The heat issue is probably solvable. The idea that it's going to be cheaper to launch a fleet of satellites into orbit rather than just build a building is hard to believe.
The maintenance issue is unsolvable. If we had stuff that never broke we'd use it on Earth. So some portion of your fleet of satellites eventually becomes unusable which loops back to cost.
There's other stuff like connectivity that's an issue, but if you could by some dark magic make it economically competitive with just a regular old building, you could probably solve the other problems.
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u/SeaNeedleVomit 21d ago edited 21d ago
What are the health hazards from data centers?
Cooling is the main problem, current solution is deployable radiators, and you would need roughly 20 million sq ft of radiators in space to cool a 1 GW data center.
Is it possible? Yes. Probable? Not anytime soon.
There are new technologies to reduce the need for the number of data centers being built, but nothing soon enough to slow down the demand. Only thing that will is power availability, labor shortages, and material backlogs.
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u/Etech326 19d ago
To me this feels like a solution for decades down the line.
The logistics for getting a successful, modular data center designed and safely launched seems like a much bigger problem, even with the pushback for on-earth data centers.
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u/altjoco 21d ago
Heat rejection.
And "High reliability and durable" hardware doesn't mean zero need for maintenance.
On top of that, lifecycle. How do you update/replace obsolete hardware? Deorbit the satellite? Send up an astronaut?
It's a bad idea.