Plus when you build a datacenter on Earth you can use it for decades. You can swap out small parts (like the servers and networking hardware), which keeps it useful. Cooling and power setups are often good for a very long time and those can also be upgraded if needed. The building itself and all of the supporting infrastructure is good for at least 50 years. And a lot of the building is dedicated to easy access for humans to do stuff like maintenance. This is a design requirement for any datacenter.
When shooting shit into space, that’s it, you can’t access it for upgrades or maintenance. And we’ve seen these past years cutting edge AI hardware is good for maybe 3 years at best. After that it’s basically worthless, maybe useful for some niche uses, but mostly useless and definitely not profitable. Not that this matters much, as to keep latency down the orbits would be so low they deorbit within 3-5 years anyways, like with the current Starlink constellation.
But this is of course very useful for a cheap launch provider, as it keeps them yeeting shit into space non-stop. And what a surprise, Elon Musk is one of the people pushing this concept hard. No alternate motives there for sure.
No such thing as a free lunch tho. It’s like saying solar energy on Earth is free, it’s obviously not. Sure, once the panels are produced and installed, the running costs are minimal. But that doesn’t mean that energy is now suddenly free. When I did the calculation on my solar installation, I took the costs of buying the panels, installing them, maintaining them and in the end tearing them down and properly recycling them. Then we calculated the estimated total energy produced during the lifetime of the system and thus arrived at a cost per unit of energy. Then we can compare that to what the cost would be as compared to other energy sources. At the time it didn’t make financial sense, as over the lifetime other energy sources (which might have been solar as well, just out of large scale installations) would be cheaper. But some government subsidies, plus a feeling the cost of energy in the future is unsure and wanting to contribute to sustainable energy production made me pay for them anyways.
It’s the exact same with launching a datacenter into space. Once it’s up there the energy might not cost anything and running costs per satellite might be relatively low (although there still are running costs for sure, often just spread out over the entire constellation), but that doesn’t mean the thing is free. Investers would want to see a return. So that means a lot of the costs are upfront, developing the system, paying the launch provider, getting the right licenses, etc, etc. Then during the lifetime of the system, it needs to sell the compute in order to make a profit. When directly competing with newer ground based systems that run cutting edge technology, it doesn’t really matter where or how the compute is done. It’s simply a unit of work being sold at market rate. Newer technology will push the price per unit down, as the new tech is more efficient. And it might make your compute less attractive as it’s lacking in newer capabilities, so it can only be sold at a lower price.
So even if the system would be designed for a lifespan of 10 years and put into an orbit that can last 10 years, the compute would be very hard to be sold for any reasonable price after 5 years. And as mentioned, operating a satellite is far from free, there are many running costs associated.
Plus when you build a datacenter on Earth you can use it for decades. You can swap out small parts (like the servers and networking hardware), which keeps it useful. Cooling and power setups are often good for a very long time and those can also be upgraded if needed. The building itself and all of the supporting infrastructure is good for at least 50 years. And a lot of the building is dedicated to easy access for humans to do stuff like maintenance. This is a design requirement for any datacenter.
When shooting shit into space, that’s it, you can’t access it for upgrades or maintenance. And we’ve seen these past years cutting edge AI hardware is good for maybe 3 years at best. After that it’s basically worthless, maybe useful for some niche uses, but mostly useless and definitely not profitable. Not that this matters much, as to keep latency down the orbits would be so low they deorbit within 3-5 years anyways, like with the current Starlink constellation.
But this is of course very useful for a cheap launch provider, as it keeps them yeeting shit into space non-stop. And what a surprise, Elon Musk is one of the people pushing this concept hard. No alternate motives there for sure.
The main reason for this unprofitability is, quite frankly, energy costs. Wouldn’t be much of an issue in space where your energy is free.
No such thing as a free lunch tho. It’s like saying solar energy on Earth is free, it’s obviously not. Sure, once the panels are produced and installed, the running costs are minimal. But that doesn’t mean that energy is now suddenly free. When I did the calculation on my solar installation, I took the costs of buying the panels, installing them, maintaining them and in the end tearing them down and properly recycling them. Then we calculated the estimated total energy produced during the lifetime of the system and thus arrived at a cost per unit of energy. Then we can compare that to what the cost would be as compared to other energy sources. At the time it didn’t make financial sense, as over the lifetime other energy sources (which might have been solar as well, just out of large scale installations) would be cheaper. But some government subsidies, plus a feeling the cost of energy in the future is unsure and wanting to contribute to sustainable energy production made me pay for them anyways.
It’s the exact same with launching a datacenter into space. Once it’s up there the energy might not cost anything and running costs per satellite might be relatively low (although there still are running costs for sure, often just spread out over the entire constellation), but that doesn’t mean the thing is free. Investers would want to see a return. So that means a lot of the costs are upfront, developing the system, paying the launch provider, getting the right licenses, etc, etc. Then during the lifetime of the system, it needs to sell the compute in order to make a profit. When directly competing with newer ground based systems that run cutting edge technology, it doesn’t really matter where or how the compute is done. It’s simply a unit of work being sold at market rate. Newer technology will push the price per unit down, as the new tech is more efficient. And it might make your compute less attractive as it’s lacking in newer capabilities, so it can only be sold at a lower price.
So even if the system would be designed for a lifespan of 10 years and put into an orbit that can last 10 years, the compute would be very hard to be sold for any reasonable price after 5 years. And as mentioned, operating a satellite is far from free, there are many running costs associated.