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#spacedatacenters#lumenorbit#googlesuncatcher

Why Everyone Is Talking About Data Centers In Space

Scott Manley

1.8M subscribers • 4 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Scott Manley

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

408K views10 months ago2 recommendations

Cloud and DevOpsHardwareScaling and large-scale architectureNetworking and protocols

Scott Manley analyzes the feasibility, economics, and thermal management challenges of building orbital data centers in space.

Last year I made a video on Lumen orbit's proposal to build data centers in space, now all the big players in spaceflight and AI are seriously looking at this. And while there's economic arguments that may be realized at some point in the future, there are other forces that may drive this. Andrew McCalip's helpful tool for playing with numbers andrewmccalip.com/space-datacenters Google's Suncatcher paper services.google.com/fh/files/misc/suncatcher_paper.pdf The original Lumen (now Starcloud) paper. starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf Follow me on Twitter for more updates: twitter.com/DJSnM I have a discord server where I regularly turn up: discord.gg/zStmKbM If you really like what I do you can support me directly through Patreon patreon.com/scottmanley

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Engineers recommend this video for its clear breakdown of the feasibility and heat management physics of space-based data centers.

Gagarin1917on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Higher usage limits for Claude and a compute deal with SpaceX”

Which is apparently manageable. Scott Manley isn’t an industry veteran, but he does know a lot about space engineering and science. Here’s his breakdown of the feasibility, and heat management is not really a major issue: link to this video
View on Hacker News

piloto_ciegoon Hacker News • Recommends

On “SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research”

Scott Manley had a really good video on it that more or less confirmed my "bar napkin approximations" when people first started talking about this stuff. I think it's this one? link to this video Anyway, I think sun synchronous orbit (basically slightly off from polar) and pointing the solar panels toward the sun and the radiator away... It's not as far fetched as people would have you believe.
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ampersandwhichon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Direct Current Data Centers”

Also not a brain surgeon, but to my understanding, modern satellites already have solar panels and radiators that account for the system's overall energy absorption and dissipation in low Earth orbit 1. Therefore, plugging a supercomputer into the solar array instead of another instrument would likely not affect the overall heat profile meaningfully. Most energy in LEO is ultimately derived from solar irradiance and passes through the spacecraft regardless of internal usage. That said, take this with a grain of salt due to the aforementioned lack of astrochirurgical bona fides. 1 link to this video
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