The standard motivation is 24/7 unfiltered sunlight to power the AI with, where you're not in anyone's backyard and don't need to convince a planning commission.
You do, though. The FAA/AST govern launches. I'm no rocket scientist but building a rocket and launching it is probably much harder than building a small data center.
It’s not though. There’s existing rocket launches that fit within a well established federal regulatory framework. Building data centers has overlapping state and municipal regulations as well as local opposition.
It’s probably a lower regulatory burden to get the approval of the FAA than it is any number of municipal bodies to get approval for building and powering a new data center. There are a lot of people that need to sign off on things. When you’re talking about space, if you can afford and build it, that list is pretty short.
I’m not convinced that the economics are favorable to space based data centers, but ironically, it still might be a lower hurdle than terrestrial data center approval.
The FAA is federal, and may pre-empt state/local laws (see: CFTC, Kalshi/Polymarket/etc).
It's also pretty well accepted that the FAA is very cozy to SpaceX, and partially because NASA is basically dependent and beholden on SpaceX at the moment.
> The standard motivation is 24/7 unfiltered sunlight to power the AI with, where you're not in anyone's backyard and don't need to convince a planning commission.
The orbit that this is in doesn't meet that criteria. While it is in a near polar orbit, it is not in a dusk dawn orbit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit ). Half of its orbit is in shadow.
As I wrote this, it is above Campo Grande, Brazil. The time there is 10 pm.
Making it difficult to shut down AI’s is very important. There’s a real chance we end up with a regulatory capture cartel that’s enforced because of “safety”.
But there are solid engineering and logistical advantages. Not having to deal with nimby’s, permitting, data center blowback is a big advantage. It’s difficult to spin up new power infrastructure in western countries, and putting up a satellite with direct 24/7 solar power means you can skip the headache of building new power infrastructure. My electricity bill has increased by 50% in the last year and most of that increase is likely because of data centers powering AI. If we can instead directly power that compute in orbit from the sun then it will not increase demand on existing power infrastructure.
What a load of horseshit. A model running on a ESP32 running off a questionable powerbank supply with dodgy coding and worse storage reliability can do that.
The only thing anyone cares about is whether the (economic)math works on put AI in space.
Putting AI in space is a silly idea. How do you cool it reliably? How do you handle rad-hardness? How do you even get the gear up there? It's one of the most expensive places to put mass.
Using geothermal power or floating solar arrays in the ocean makes way more sense. It's much easier to access, you have water for a heat sink, and you're far away from anyone or anything that would really care.
More controversially, if geothermal or solar doesn't pan out, you could power it via nuclear microreactors (just what I want floating in my world's ocean) or gas that would otherwise be flared off from a deep sea oil well (CO2 non-withstanding).
The public doesn't need to. If these companies actually try to build datacenters in space they will bankrupt themselves. It's a ridiculously stupid idea.
Satellite cooling is long figured out, the problem is that it requires a ton of expensive mass.
Radiation hardening is not a huge issue in LEO either. It is an issue, not the issue.
Overall, it's like choosing international flights as your choice of a restaurant. It's...fundamentally...doable...? But nobody knows why you would want that, unless flying GPUs is the point rather than to offer a competitive service using the server sats.
No, I mean, you can fly daily from NYC to London and back every single night for 5 years straight just to use the business class seats to sleep and to have inflight meals as your dinners and your breakfasts. That would be a 100% feasible solved problem from technical standpoint. But why would you do that.
They can probably build like, a gigantic satellite that fits in an expendable Starship that has like just couples of RTX5090 32GB backed by a Tesla battery pack and a gigantic multi panel actively refrigerating radiator system. Or use bunch of such Starships to assemble a whole rack worth of GPUs on orbit that costs billions total and minimum half a year to build out. Satellites and radiators are solved good enough for that.
Or you can put just the computer part on a desk indoor on Earth and plug it into the wall and have it cooled with fans. Or have a guy roll up an air cooled rack full of GPUs next to it. Why involve the rockets and satellites and all. What's the point. That's what everyone is puzzled with.
The fact that this comment is being downvoted says so much about so many things. And so many people. This community--not just HN, I'm talking about tech at large--has totally lost its way.
This was a completely vapid article. I expected some technical details at least, but instead it's an LLM generated poem confirming it worked in a short interval, which nobody doubts it would. All eyes are on long term heat dissipation and the impact of radiation and success of radiation hardening meterials and processes.
A competing team at Google already exfiltrated the weights of the model running on the satellite and uploaded them to huggingface! https://huggingface.co/google/gemma-4-E4B
Is this the piece of junk that can only run for 15min at a time before it overheats? They probably could have done some more analysis before launching it into space.. Like put the radiator in a vacuum chamber maybe? Or do some thermal modelling? Or did they know it would do this and launch it anyway? Would love to know why.
> The chips can operate for about 15 minutes in space before needing to be shut down so they can cool off, said Travis Beals, Google’s senior director of product management for Project Suncatcher.
smallerize | 10 hours ago
ls612 | 10 hours ago
AtlasBarfed | 10 hours ago
ls612 | 10 hours ago
smallerize | 9 hours ago
CamperBob2 | 8 hours ago
BurningFrog | 10 hours ago
randomblock1 | 10 hours ago
vlovich123 | 8 hours ago
mbreese | 8 hours ago
I’m not convinced that the economics are favorable to space based data centers, but ironically, it still might be a lower hurdle than terrestrial data center approval.
dannyw | 8 hours ago
It's also pretty well accepted that the FAA is very cozy to SpaceX, and partially because NASA is basically dependent and beholden on SpaceX at the moment.
BurningFrog | 4 hours ago
shagie | 8 hours ago
The orbit that this is in doesn't meet that criteria. While it is in a near polar orbit, it is not in a dusk dawn orbit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit ). Half of its orbit is in shadow.
As I wrote this, it is above Campo Grande, Brazil. The time there is 10 pm.
https://satellitemap.space/sat/100902
UltraSane | 9 hours ago
relaxing | 8 hours ago
BobbyJo | 8 hours ago
openasocket | 7 hours ago
dnautics | 7 hours ago
JumpCrisscross | 6 hours ago
UltraSane | 7 hours ago
Dig1t | 8 hours ago
But there are solid engineering and logistical advantages. Not having to deal with nimby’s, permitting, data center blowback is a big advantage. It’s difficult to spin up new power infrastructure in western countries, and putting up a satellite with direct 24/7 solar power means you can skip the headache of building new power infrastructure. My electricity bill has increased by 50% in the last year and most of that increase is likely because of data centers powering AI. If we can instead directly power that compute in orbit from the sun then it will not increase demand on existing power infrastructure.
avaer | 10 hours ago
Havoc | 10 hours ago
What a load of horseshit. A model running on a ESP32 running off a questionable powerbank supply with dodgy coding and worse storage reliability can do that.
The only thing anyone cares about is whether the (economic)math works on put AI in space.
GolfPopper | 9 hours ago
This is a greater fool market. The only thing anyone cares about is whether they think someone else will believe the math will work out.
aftbit | 10 hours ago
Using geothermal power or floating solar arrays in the ocean makes way more sense. It's much easier to access, you have water for a heat sink, and you're far away from anyone or anything that would really care.
More controversially, if geothermal or solar doesn't pan out, you could power it via nuclear microreactors (just what I want floating in my world's ocean) or gas that would otherwise be flared off from a deep sea oil well (CO2 non-withstanding).
smallerize | 9 hours ago
orf | 9 hours ago
relaxing | 8 hours ago
27183 | 8 hours ago
numpad0 | 9 hours ago
Radiation hardening is not a huge issue in LEO either. It is an issue, not the issue.
Overall, it's like choosing international flights as your choice of a restaurant. It's...fundamentally...doable...? But nobody knows why you would want that, unless flying GPUs is the point rather than to offer a competitive service using the server sats.
danishanish | 6 hours ago
numpad0 | 3 hours ago
They can probably build like, a gigantic satellite that fits in an expendable Starship that has like just couples of RTX5090 32GB backed by a Tesla battery pack and a gigantic multi panel actively refrigerating radiator system. Or use bunch of such Starships to assemble a whole rack worth of GPUs on orbit that costs billions total and minimum half a year to build out. Satellites and radiators are solved good enough for that.
Or you can put just the computer part on a desk indoor on Earth and plug it into the wall and have it cooled with fans. Or have a guy roll up an air cooled rack full of GPUs next to it. Why involve the rockets and satellites and all. What's the point. That's what everyone is puzzled with.
Dig1t | 8 hours ago
It’s totally doable.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FlQYU3m1e80
27183 | 8 hours ago
loufe | 10 hours ago
smallerize | 9 hours ago
zdc1 | 8 hours ago
6thbit | 9 hours ago
I suppose it’s beyond hard anyone would hijack their satellite but still. Wonder if they put any physical security on it anyway.
gcr | 9 hours ago
Aboutplants | 9 hours ago
27183 | 8 hours ago
skybrian | 8 hours ago
27183 | 8 hours ago
> The chips can operate for about 15 minutes in space before needing to be shut down so they can cool off, said Travis Beals, Google’s senior director of product management for Project Suncatcher.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/technology/google-suncatc...
skybrian | 6 hours ago
s1artibartfast | 4 hours ago
Part of development is prototyping and testing. This is part of a process to learn and inform the design of later versions.
We would have very little science or technology if we did not do such tests.