Data Centers in Space: Pi in the Sky or AI Hallucination?
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Data centers are emerging as a new environmental flashpoint for the tech industry. Public concern is growing over their hunger for power and thirst for water. What’s the tech industry’s reaction to the problem? Put the data centers in space.
Space is a great place for data centers because it solves one of the biggest problems with locating data centers on Earth: power, argues Google’s Senior Director of Paradigms of Intelligence, Travis Beals.
“The Sun is the ultimate energy source in our solar system, emitting more power than 100 trillion times humanity’s total electricity production,” he explained in a company blog. “In the right orbit, a solar panel can be up to eight times more productive than on Earth, and produce power nearly continuously, reducing the need for batteries.”
“In the future, space may be the best place to scale AI compute,” he asserted. “Working backwards from there, our new research moonshot, Project Suncatcher, envisions compact constellations of solar-powered satellites, carrying Google TPUs [Tensor Processing Units] and connected by free-space optical links. This approach would have tremendous potential for scale and also minimizes impact on terrestrial resources.”
SpaceX is also on board with the idea of data centers in space. Last month, it filed a request with the Federal Communications Commission to launch a constellation of up to one million solar-powered satellites that it said will serve as data centers for artificial intelligence.
The filing maintains that its satellite scheme is “the most efficient way to meet the accelerating demand for AI computing power” and frames them as “a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization — one that can harness the Sun’s full power” while also “ensuring humanity’s multi-planetary future amongst the stars.”
The Kardashev Scale is a framework proposed in 1964 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev to classify civilizations by their energy consumption. A level I civilization uses all the energy on its home planet; a level II civilization uses all the energy output of its star; and a level III civilization uses all the energy of its galaxy.
Unlimited Power
Industry analysts say the energy argument is driving much of the early momentum behind orbital data center proposals.
“Space offers essentially unlimited access to power at marginal costs approaching zero dollars,” asserted Gordon Bell, a principal for strategy and execution at EY-Parthenon, in Boston, the global strategy consulting arm of Ernst & Young.
“Space offers a potential solution to the largest and most persistent bottleneck currently facing the data center industry,” Bell told TechNewsWorld. “The data center industry is plagued by power constraints that are not going to be resolved any time soon.”
He explained that construction of new generation and transmission assets are multi-year endeavors for a multitude of reasons, including misaligned incentives between utilities and the data center industry, supply chain, regulatory and labor constraints, NIMBYism, and more.
Providing energy to support the operations of the IT and cooling equipment within a data center is also the largest operating expense, he added.
“Most space-based data centers are envisioned to be placed in sun-synchronous orbit, facing the sun 24/7,” he noted. “This would allow for the generation of solar power at very high efficiency, as well as a reduced need for any cooling or back-up equipment.”
“Traditional cooling equipment would be mostly eliminated, as it is very cold in space and heat would be ejected into space via radiators,” he continued. “Back-up equipment could be removed, as the power generation source — the sun — would always be shining and generating energy.”
Orbital Promise vs Practical Risks
Ellis Scherer, the policy analyst for broadband, spectrum, and space policy at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a research and public policy organization in Washington, D.C., agreed that orbital data centers could address some of the environmental and power grid concerns of building more data centers on Earth.
“Data centers in space can access solar power 24/7 in certain ‘sun-synchronous’ orbits, giving them all the power they need to operate without putting immense strain on power grids here on Earth,” Scherer told TechNewsWorld. “This would alleviate concerns about consumers having to bear the costs of higher energy use.”
“There is also less risk of running out of real estate in space, no complex permitting requirements, and no community pushback to new data centers being built in people’s backyards,” he added.
