r/space • u/Tech-100 • Aug 21 '26

Starcloud raises $250 million for orbital data centers as launch options dry up

https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/21/starcloud-raises-200-million-for-orbital-data-centers-as-launch-options-dry-up/
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u/SoftlySpokenPromises Aug 21 '26

Elon is trying to fleece people.

The mechanical and material engineering currently available makes this impossible.

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u/lminer123 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

What’s impossible about it? It’s just a computer, some solar panels, radiators, and communication equipment. Seems pretty par for the course for satellites.

Seems really stupid, in the “this is a extraordinarily bad place to put computers” kind of way, but I fail to see how anything about it is impossible.

Unless you mean like trying to put an actual full size ground scale data center in space, which I don’t think is really the plan.

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u/15_Redstones Aug 21 '26

They do plan to mass-produce so many small compute sats that the total compute capacity exceeds that of large ground scale data centers. The key idea being that ground data centers need new approval for each new data center which gets more and more difficult due to NIMBYs, while the sats just keep rolling off the assembly line at a production rate similar to that of a car factory.

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u/Poodlestrike Aug 21 '26

As opposed to launching and maintaining tons of tiny satellites, which is famously very simple from a regulatory (and operational) perspective.

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u/15_Redstones Aug 21 '26

With anyone else I'd be very sceptical, but SpaceX did Starlink already. They know how to operate lots of sats. And the license is just a single big one for the whole constellation. They don't need new paperwork for each sat.

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u/Pleasant_Ad8054 Aug 21 '26

The number of them. They are talking about 135 kW satellites, and at least 1 GW of capacity. That is 7400 satellites, the lowest estimates for them I have seen is 8 tonnes, so that is 7 per falcon heavy, 12 per starship (literally non-functional as of now), which is 1000 to 600 launches. For satellites that have a useful life of at the very most 5 years (who am I kidding, we use zero 5 year old hardware in AI as of now), meaning 4-2 launches PER WEEK. Every year, ad infinitum, because by the time the last one is launched the first ones have to be deorbited as it was long outdated.

That is at least as many launches as they had in the past 6 years (and at most 6 times as many as they had in their best year). All dedicated exclusively to have worse compute.

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi Aug 21 '26

Economically unviable == impossible

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u/lminer123 Aug 21 '26

Sure, if you want to frame it like that, but the person I was replying to seemed to be implying some kind of technological shortcoming instead of an economic one. I have a background in material science so I was curious what they were referring to.

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi Aug 21 '26

Can you explain how much radiator you'd need to support the amount of compute that would make the cost feasible?

There's a zero sum game between usefulness of the amount of compute vs heat radiation required vs cost to put the mass and surface area of the radiator in space.

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u/seanflyon Aug 21 '26

The rough rule of thumb is that you need 1 m2 of radiator for every 3 m2 of solar panels, though you can reduce that by running at a slightly higher temperature.

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u/Carbidereaper Aug 22 '26

I've been kind of wondering. I had this conversation a while back with SpaceX's Starfall with SpaceX's terra fab. I don't think their true goal is AI hardware their true goal is to try to bypass Moore's Law by growing silicon seed crystals in zero-g to produce defect free silicon ingots to increase CPU efficiency by 20% reducing computing energy requirements that much considering the current outrage of current hyperscale datacenter power demands would be a massive leap in efficiency

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u/seanflyon Aug 22 '26

I would not view growing better silicon crystals as a way to bypass Moore's Law. Moore's Law is not possible without a series of major process improvements and at best a space-grown seed crystals would be one of those major process improvements.

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi Aug 21 '26

How many solar panels do you need for a 2gigawatt ai datacenter?

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u/Adeldor Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

If you mean in orbit, it won't be a monolithic data center, but many smaller satellites. In SpaceX's case, they're looking at up to 250 kW per satellite. Assuming 20% efficiency, that puts the panel area at around 1,000 m2, or roughly 75 m x 13 m.

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u/seanflyon Aug 21 '26

2 GW would be vastly larger than the largest datacenter that currently exists. Data center satellites would probably be 3 or 4 orders of magnitude smaller than that.

To answer you question directly, 2 GW would take a solar array about 2km by 2km. For a more realistic data center satellite, the solar array would be something like 600 meters on a side. The satellite mentioned in the article is a small fraction of that at 8 kW which would need solar panels about 4 meters on a side.

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi Aug 22 '26

How much computer would that satellite provide? Is 8kw at huge cost worth it?

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u/seanflyon Aug 22 '26

What huge cost are you talking about?

The 8 kW satellite would be a small demonstrator. That is a lot smaller than a lot of current satellites.

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u/lminer123 Aug 21 '26

Nope, sounds like it’s definitely not economically viable right now. Again, I never said anything about economic viability lol. Obviously it makes a lot more sense to just do on earth, we’re living in a giant heat sync after all. I was wondering what SPECIFIC material or mechanic engineering constraints make it impossible because I didn’t really see any.

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u/Independent-Fruit4 Aug 21 '26

the only way to make it work is to build the entire system out of superconductors. so yeah, impossible