Elon Musk claims SpaceX ‘will be doing’ data centers in space. Beijing to bring large-scale AI computing to space with new data center plan. How realistic is that vision? What future applications could it unlock?
No, that’s not going to happen. Anyone who has ever thought about data centers knows they consume lots and lots and lots of power. Where are you going to get that? Acres of solar panels? And data centers create lots and lots and lots of heat. Where is that going to go? There’s only so much you can lose to blackbody radiation. Add to this that if you’re doing things in geosync, then you’re going to need radiation-hardened silicon, which is simply not competitive. How would this begin to compete with ANY data center on Earth? This makes even less sense than Microsoft’s underwater data center project.
