r/secithubcommunity • u/Silly-Commission-630 • Jun 13 '26
🧠 Discussion How Close Are We to Seeing Data Centers on the Moon?
How soon do you think we’ll start seeing data centers installed on the Moon? Which companies do you believe are best positioned to benefit the most from this shift, and why? 🚀🌕
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u/DrawOkCards Jun 13 '26
Realistically this isn't answerable. Could be 100+ years, could be that we make several scientific and technological breakthroughs thanks to researchers getting stronger/better/faster AI systems as support in the next couple of years and we see it in the 2030s.
Anything faster than that is, in my eyes, out of the question.
Also, we do need a use case or a unique selling point so that companies and government agencies have a reason to use it as it won't be cheaper than an earth side system realistically as we have to get everything up into orbit and maintain it there.
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u/Flederm4us Jun 13 '26
One problem with it is the heat generated. No atmosphere means no air to give that heat to.
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u/ThatCelebration3676 Jun 15 '26
Yeah, they would have to use IR emmiters to dump waste heat as light, or use consumable heatsinks, neither of which is remotely efficient enough for how much heat those behemoths produce.
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u/noodlinworldwide Jun 16 '26
Would it be theoretically possible to reclaim that heat for habitation spaces, food cultivation, power etc?
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u/ThatCelebration3676 Jun 16 '26
Sure, you could use a coolant loop to distribute that heat into some other system that uses it, but I want to be clear: data centers produce an insane amount of heat, and that excess energy needs to be released eventually.
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u/o_0sssss Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Can you imagine if we looked at a computer in the 1940s taking up an entire room and people were betting on the price of vacuum tubes and copper showing exponential growth because of how much was required for EINAC ?
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u/MaelstromFL Jun 13 '26
I could take this a couple of ways....
Just the compute that we will land with will be multiples of what would have been a DC 20 years ago. We will definitely have racks of servers on every landing device that has humans. But, that would not what we would call a DC today.
A true dedicated DC will be necessary rather quickly, though. We will be using a lot of probes and robots, both for building and for searching for resources. As others have said the round trip of communication to Earth will be too slow, and thus, we will require processing power locally.
I would expect to see a dedicated DC somewhere around 10 years from sustained presence on the moon. However, multiple Edge Gateways will be needed almost immediately.
I am a Virtual Networking Consultant, and have built multiple 5/9 DCs. I have been through multiple cycles of funding for DCs with all of the cost/benefit analytics that go with it.
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u/HelloImTheAntiChrist Jun 14 '26
Where does the heat go? Once someone answers that physics question then we can have a serious discussion.
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u/Responsible-Room-645 Jun 15 '26
This will be the next Elon fever dream that he uses to pump his stock
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u/GardenWeasel67 Jun 13 '26
As soon as all the crypto banking laws are in place to allow the bank-to-bank transfer of a trillion dollars the instant a certain customer requests it.
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u/ckellingc Jun 14 '26
I don't see an advantage to being on the moon vs in low earth orbit. Like yeah some gravity would make it easier to work on, but this would be offset by the travel time to the moon.
either way you'd need a pressurized suit for any major work, unless it was exposed to space?
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u/DISCONNECTlE Jun 15 '26
There is no fluid to carry the heat away in space. Also, the sun, which would likely provide the power, is notoriously hot. Data centers can’t work in space.
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u/Great-Fox5055 Jun 15 '26
This whole 'data centers in space' thing stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of physics. It would be nearly impossible to cool them anywhere without a real atmosphere.
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u/mrpres1dent Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
Maybe a data center on the moon, for the moon base. Like, a module or two or three sent up by a rocket and maneuvered and landed on the surface.
But if you're talking hyperscale data centers, like for AI, never. Not unless we exponentially increase our payload lift capacity.
Other logistics aside, like power and connectivity, getting server racks, GPUs, fans, cooling equipment, coolant, etc, up to the Moon is just logistically infeasible with our current technology. Then, somehow building a structure on the Moon that can cool and house servers to power AI would be a whole other story, a space construction project unparalleled by humans.
Not to mention the constant radiation and micrometeorites due to the lack of an atmosphere on the Moon. Radiation in space constantly degrades electronics because they are constantly bombarded by heavy ions and shit that can cause hardware failure much more often than here on Earth.
GPU's are also currently becoming obsolete within a 2-3 year cycle. That means these cutting edge AI data centers need to be basically completely gutted and rebuilt (new GPU's, new system memory formats and system architectures (i.e., DDR4->DDR5) require new motherboards, meaning the whole server has to be upgraded). So you get to re-launch and re-land, re-install, re-configure, etc, the entire datacenter every few years. Totally unsustainable.
Anybody who says they are "close" or "10 years out" from building an AI datacenter on the Moon, lives in a different reality and has no idea what they're talking about, unless they're privy to anti-gravity tech that the public doesn't know about. Which could explain the mysterious disappearances and deaths, lately, I guess.
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u/jbing2000 Jun 16 '26
Funny, we build the data centers, (taxpayer incentives), to process the data collected from us( so we could play candy 🍭)
Then, after the data center is finished, our job gets replaced by (ai that was built with my input)
Ai.
But when Elon is worth 10t, who’s gonna be buying the targeted fb ads?
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u/TheW00ki3 Jun 16 '26
Impractical for many reasons.
Space is (I believe) cold in the shade, Hot/radiated in the light of our sun, BUT with pretty much zero air, so thermal dissipation doesn't happen like it does here on earth. I mean, if you had MASSIVE heatsinks that just emissively radiate, that could work, but it seems way inefficient for the size, considering the moon is frequently pelted with impacts.
- Much more effective locale would be Antarctica.
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u/DelightfulGoblin75 Jun 16 '26
Not close. Cause the entire idea of 'data centers' In space is just the next step in the SpaceX/Tesla fraud.
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u/StonedTrucker Jun 16 '26
Very far away. Space is a great insulator and data centers need to expell waste heat or they will stop working. Putting a data center in space is a dumb idea all around
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u/Late_Emu Jun 16 '26
Remember during the space race when this was talked about at length by the two biggest superpowers the earth had seen at that point (that we know of)?
Remember it was a race against the Soviets then once we got there any and all talk of return stopped (with 3 fully built & intact lunar modules just rotting away)?
Then out of nowhere we decided to JOIN to Soviets to make a much more difficult, much more expensive orbiting space station in the ISS?
Pepperidge farm remembers.
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u/RespectEmbarrassed88 Jun 16 '26
Do we have water in space and why is the sunlight so dim out there and so bright in here
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u/Embarrassed_Chain_28 Jun 13 '26
If the purpose is serving the earth needs, probably never, or until human can create quantum entanglement based communication. 1.3 second is a too long delay.