It’s stupid on so many levels… yeah first and foremost basically everything about space is terrible for data centers.
What are the 3 things a data center needs.
Power, cooling, good internet connection. Obviously power is complicated as heck, yeah solar is a bit more direct, but also hits total blackouts when it winds up in the shadow of things… and shielding etc… from all the radiation is a pain and a half, solar pannels will need to be drastically bigger and heavier than their earth counterparts, which is expensive as hell to send up there.
but the harder part… cooling. People think of space as cold, but that’s innacurate… there’s no air to be cold… things stay at the temperature they are… if you have something constantly pumping out heat… it’s insanely difficult to get the heat to radiate out.
Just read a comment about exactly this a few days ago. Anyone working on space components know that a very hat problem to work on is how to keep things cool because, well - having the fucking sun shine on things most of the time directly without the ozone layer and air to dissipate heat in and way does make things go hot.
Also, you forgot a very important thing a data center needs: people that work there. That is one of the reasons we currently build data centers so close to urban sprawls in Arizona instead of somewhere in the middle of Alaska or in polar regions. There must be personnel working onsite all the time.
It’s funny to me because the moon would be a much better choice, if latency wasn’t an issue. Don’t get me wrong, if your aim is uptime, reliability and ease of upgrades/use then terrestrial based is your only option.
But if your goal was off Earth, the moon has a number of advantages that free floating in orbit lacks. You can place the servers themselves underground in lavatubes or excavated caverns as well as install heat-sinks (or even seal a cavern, pressurize it and use what ever gaseous medium for extra heat capacity and thermal transfer) then place a series of solar on the surface with battery support (remembering that lunar nights are 2 weeks long) to generate all your power needs, as well as take advantage of the moon’s tidally locked nature to have your transmission and receivers always pointed at the Earth, or relay satellites in orbit.
Such a project could coincide with NASA or other agencies or enterprises looking to establish settlements on the moon for research or mining purposes, so you could have short or long term settlements with technicians on hand to troubleshoot any problems that arise or even get semi regular (every 18-24 months) deliveries of components for repairs and upgrades for your system, something that long term would be a lot simpler logistically and more stable than attempting a satellite or constellation of satellites any Earth orbit.
The plan is nonsensical for a number of reasons, namely the cost and long term dedication, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than trying to put an energy intensive project in orbit and hope the lowest bidder parts last more than 6 months.
I mean, the two weeks of darkness is the real killer.
I mean look, let’s say our datacenter requires 100 kw of power. That means about an 800 square m solar array. If you need to store enough power to run the system through a two week night, you’ll need a lot of batteries and a much larger array. You’ll only be collecting power half the time, so the array needs to be twice as large. But there are about 30% losses in transferring energy to the battery, drain over time, and then transferring back, so some quick math says you now need somewhere around 230kw, for a 1800 square m solar array.
Currently, an array large enough to generate 100kw weighs between 1-2 tons. If we’re optimistic and say 1 ton, that’s 2.25 tons for our equivalent moon array
Now the batteries. The capacity needs to be enough to store 130kw over the course of two weeks. 130kw x 24hours x 14days = 43,680 kw hours of storage. Lithium ion batteries weigh about 5kg per kwh of storage. 43,680 kwh of storage would weigh 218 tons. And that’s just the base weight of the batteries, I didn’t factor in whatever structures or systems the batteries would need to be usable in space.
Here’s where I point out that it costs about $5 mil per ton sent to orbit. It costs somewhere between $100 mil and $1 bil to send 1 ton to the moon. Personally, I think it’s a lot easier to send 1 ton to low earth orbit, than to send 220 tons all the way to the moon. I think the only way to make data centers on the moon make sense, would be if you’re already living and working on the moon in a functioning settlement.
As crazy as orbital data centers are, if your counting in dollars, lunar data centers are literally 10,000 times crazier.
Well, you’re thinking about the right things for sure! Power, cooling, Internet connection, all super important.
But as it turns out, terrestrial solar panels are actually heavier than space solar panels, like a lot heavier. Shielding against radiation is actually less of a challenge than shielding against weather and acorns. The ISS updated it’s solar array a while back and its new ones were deployed by rolling them out, they were a thin enough film to actually roll up for launch and then roll out once attached to the ISS.
Also, these solar panels won’t have blackouts. With a sun synchronous orbit, these panels simply won’t be in shadow basically ever. The one exception would be during solar eclipses.
As for cooling, you do probably need radiators with active cooling systems. Generally you need radiator panels at a ratio of about 1/5 of the area of your solar panels, but this can vary with different designs. But that’s a linear relationship, cooling doesn’t become unfeasible at some point it just remains a design concern. The more power you generate, the more radiators you need. It’s just part of the cost of power and it scales linearly with the area of your solar array.
People forget that black body radiation is to the 4th power of the temperature difference. I assure you if your server cluster is at 1000 Kelvin cooling will be the least of your worries
It’s stupid on so many levels… yeah first and foremost basically everything about space is terrible for data centers.
What are the 3 things a data center needs.
Power, cooling, good internet connection. Obviously power is complicated as heck, yeah solar is a bit more direct, but also hits total blackouts when it winds up in the shadow of things… and shielding etc… from all the radiation is a pain and a half, solar pannels will need to be drastically bigger and heavier than their earth counterparts, which is expensive as hell to send up there.
but the harder part… cooling. People think of space as cold, but that’s innacurate… there’s no air to be cold… things stay at the temperature they are… if you have something constantly pumping out heat… it’s insanely difficult to get the heat to radiate out.
Just read a comment about exactly this a few days ago. Anyone working on space components know that a very hat problem to work on is how to keep things cool because, well - having the fucking sun shine on things most of the time directly without the ozone layer and air to dissipate heat in and way does make things go hot.
Also, you forgot a very important thing a data center needs: people that work there. That is one of the reasons we currently build data centers so close to urban sprawls in Arizona instead of somewhere in the middle of Alaska or in polar regions. There must be personnel working onsite all the time.
Also it will need repairs. And probably more often than not due to the radiation.
And micro meteorites pelting it
It’s funny to me because the moon would be a much better choice, if latency wasn’t an issue. Don’t get me wrong, if your aim is uptime, reliability and ease of upgrades/use then terrestrial based is your only option.
But if your goal was off Earth, the moon has a number of advantages that free floating in orbit lacks. You can place the servers themselves underground in lavatubes or excavated caverns as well as install heat-sinks (or even seal a cavern, pressurize it and use what ever gaseous medium for extra heat capacity and thermal transfer) then place a series of solar on the surface with battery support (remembering that lunar nights are 2 weeks long) to generate all your power needs, as well as take advantage of the moon’s tidally locked nature to have your transmission and receivers always pointed at the Earth, or relay satellites in orbit.
Such a project could coincide with NASA or other agencies or enterprises looking to establish settlements on the moon for research or mining purposes, so you could have short or long term settlements with technicians on hand to troubleshoot any problems that arise or even get semi regular (every 18-24 months) deliveries of components for repairs and upgrades for your system, something that long term would be a lot simpler logistically and more stable than attempting a satellite or constellation of satellites any Earth orbit.
The plan is nonsensical for a number of reasons, namely the cost and long term dedication, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than trying to put an energy intensive project in orbit and hope the lowest bidder parts last more than 6 months.
I’m not sure the moon makes a lot of sense.
I mean, the two weeks of darkness is the real killer.
I mean look, let’s say our datacenter requires 100 kw of power. That means about an 800 square m solar array. If you need to store enough power to run the system through a two week night, you’ll need a lot of batteries and a much larger array. You’ll only be collecting power half the time, so the array needs to be twice as large. But there are about 30% losses in transferring energy to the battery, drain over time, and then transferring back, so some quick math says you now need somewhere around 230kw, for a 1800 square m solar array.
Currently, an array large enough to generate 100kw weighs between 1-2 tons. If we’re optimistic and say 1 ton, that’s 2.25 tons for our equivalent moon array
Now the batteries. The capacity needs to be enough to store 130kw over the course of two weeks. 130kw x 24hours x 14days = 43,680 kw hours of storage. Lithium ion batteries weigh about 5kg per kwh of storage. 43,680 kwh of storage would weigh 218 tons. And that’s just the base weight of the batteries, I didn’t factor in whatever structures or systems the batteries would need to be usable in space.
Here’s where I point out that it costs about $5 mil per ton sent to orbit. It costs somewhere between $100 mil and $1 bil to send 1 ton to the moon. Personally, I think it’s a lot easier to send 1 ton to low earth orbit, than to send 220 tons all the way to the moon. I think the only way to make data centers on the moon make sense, would be if you’re already living and working on the moon in a functioning settlement.
As crazy as orbital data centers are, if your counting in dollars, lunar data centers are literally 10,000 times crazier.
Well, you’re thinking about the right things for sure! Power, cooling, Internet connection, all super important.
But as it turns out, terrestrial solar panels are actually heavier than space solar panels, like a lot heavier. Shielding against radiation is actually less of a challenge than shielding against weather and acorns. The ISS updated it’s solar array a while back and its new ones were deployed by rolling them out, they were a thin enough film to actually roll up for launch and then roll out once attached to the ISS.
Also, these solar panels won’t have blackouts. With a sun synchronous orbit, these panels simply won’t be in shadow basically ever. The one exception would be during solar eclipses.
As for cooling, you do probably need radiators with active cooling systems. Generally you need radiator panels at a ratio of about 1/5 of the area of your solar panels, but this can vary with different designs. But that’s a linear relationship, cooling doesn’t become unfeasible at some point it just remains a design concern. The more power you generate, the more radiators you need. It’s just part of the cost of power and it scales linearly with the area of your solar array.
People forget that black body radiation is to the 4th power of the temperature difference. I assure you if your server cluster is at 1000 Kelvin cooling will be the least of your worries