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Comment by NishanStepak | Hacker News Reader

The advantage is solar power in space. They will never stop getting sunlight.

There's a very narrow band of sun-synchronous orbit with consistent enough sunlight to make orbital data centers viable. Even with a tight constellation of 500,000 to 1,000,000 satellites packed into that band, it still doesn't make economic sense compared to what terrestrial data centers can do. At 500,000 satellites you're looking at maybe 50 GW of solar power. Then factor in the lifespan of LEO at ~5 years you're looking at hundreds of satellite launches daily to maintain that infrastructure.

Now work is being done for increasing solar access (Starcatcher) and others are working on improving LEO refueling and repair capabilities, but I would say we're decade+ away from establishing any true compute infrastructure in orbit.

decade+ is not really that long, is it? Say you're correct in that time frame. If you put money in now to a venture that seems uncertain then in 5 years it's going to seem much less uncertain - and so the investment will be worth that much more.

I think there's an oft repeated view that markets only look to the next quarter. That's not really true. Markets (or people) are willing to go in on long term investments as long as they believe they understand the uncertainty. Which leads to crazy 2nd and 3rd order speculation (I think you think that they think...)

Personally putting money into space based datacenters seems crazy to me currently but in a couple of years it'll be more clear as to just how crazy this is. At which point the opportunity (and risk) will be gone one way or the other.

You're right on that perspective. I should clarify. I mean decades+ when compute and power begins to realistically make sense where we can start planning such a long term strategy. I personally think our cislunar / moonbase efforts are a better effort to put energy and resources into.

In LEO you are about 50% of the time in the shadow of the Earth. Higher orbits or solar orbit (where you can get uninterrupted sunlight) require a lot more fuel and the further out the data center is, the higher the latency.

Solar and batteries get you through the entire day right here on Earth, plus you can shit in a toilet when you need to go on site to fix or upgrade something, not in a little tube. Plus you can probably just drive there instead of needing 15,000 feet/sec delta-v to get to orbit. And you can breathe. Surely the cost of batteries and panels do not exceed the costs and logistical pain-in-the-dick going into orbit will impose.

There is a 150 KW Solar Array on Space X's first Data Center In Space It was launched in June of 2026. Technology improves at a steady pace. Space solar power is new and will improve over time because it is not a mature technology. Also, in space solar power is continuous and receives more energy than on the ground. https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/article/spacex-...

https://youtu.be/-w6G7VEwNq0?t=340

This has little to do with rationality. It is the classic Move And Fast Break Things combined with the off base idea of building a Kardashev scale civilization. This part of Elon Musk's philosophy as well as many of the tech bros who believe in Abundance. https://x.com/teslaownersSV/status/2068178062030803390

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