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Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

(angadh.com)
199 points angadh | 1 comments | 26 Jun 25 20:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | source
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energywut ◴[26 Jun 25 20:49 UTC] No.44391208[source]▶
Putting a datacenter in space is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while.

Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of batteries

Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to?

Latency? Highly variable.

Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible.

Radiation shielding? Not free.

Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous!

Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and keep them fueled.

There's no upside, it's only downsides as far as I can tell.

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1. notepad0x90 ◴[27 Jun 25 01:49 UTC] No.44393116[source]▶
You're making lots of assumptions. They can put like 1000 Raspberrypi's which don't need all that much cooling and relatively little energy requirements.

For your other concerns, the risks are worth it for customers because of the main reward: No laws or governments in space! Technically, the datacenter company could be found liable but not for traffic, only for take-down refusals. Physical security is the most important security. For a lot of potential clients, simply making sure human access to the device is difficult is worth data-loss,latency and reliability issues.