zlacker

>>g-mork+(OP)
A former NASA engineer with a PhD in space electronics who later worked at Google for 10 years wrote an article about why datacenters in space are very technically challenging:

https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri...

I don't have any specialized knowledge of the physics but I saw an article suggesting the real reason for the push to build them in space is to hedge against political pushback preventing construction on Earth.

I can't find the original article but here is one about datacenter pushback:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-08-20/ai-and...

But even if political pushback on Earth is the real reason, it still seems datacenters in space are extremely technically challenging/impossible to build.

>>n_u+zs
We don’t even have a habitable structure in space when the ISS falls, there is no world in which space datacenters are a thing in the next 10, I’d argue even 30 years. People really need to ground themselves in reality.

Edit: okay Tiangong - but that is not a data center.

>>taurat+0t
Ok then short SpaceX stock when it IPOs.

>>TheBli+6v
What does stock price have to do with anything?

That someone could put a data center in space for the price of 100 years of eliminating world hunger doesn’t mean shit.

>>taurat+1y
People always make this claim about world hunger elimination with no sources. Keep in mind we make more than enough calories to feed everyone on the planet many times over, it's a problem of distribution, of getting the food to the right areas and continuing cultivation for self sufficiency.

>>satvik+KB
That’s right, it’s an allocation of resources problem, and some people seem to control almost all the resources.

>>taurat+CF
Even the most magnanimous allocators cannot defeat the realities of boots on the ground in terms of distribution. It is a very difficult problem that cannot be solved top down, the only solution we've seen is growth of economic activity via capitalistic means, lifting millions, billions out of poverty as Asia has done in the last century for example.

>>satvik+VJ
You can pay for a lot of people when you have a billion dollars. When you have a trillion, you can move countries.

When someone lives in opulence while the rest of the world burns, the rest of the world doesn’t sit idly.

>>taurat+SL1
When you have a billion dollars you can't even give each person in China a dollar.