If the architects of the artificial intelligence boom are right, it’s only a matter of time before data centers – the gigantic computing facilities that power artificial intelligence – are floating in orbit and visible in the night sky like planets.
This science-fiction dream is being driven by leaders in the AI and space industries, who are increasingly concerned that data centers will ultimately require more energy and land than is available on Earth. So one solution – perhaps the only one, they say – is to start building them in space.
Google announced in November that it was working on Project Suncatcher, a space data center project with test launches beginning in 2027. Elon Musk said at a recent conference that space data centers would be the cheapest way to train AI “in no more than five years.”
Others who have pledged support for the idea include Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin; Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI; and Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. “It’s not a debate, it’s going to happen,” said Philip Johnston, chief executive of Starcloud, a space data center startup. “The question is when.”
The idea has gained traction as the AI race reaches fever pitch, fueling fears of a potential bubble. Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon and other major tech companies are investing hundreds of billions in data centers around the world, with OpenAI alone committing $1.4 trillion to such projects.
Saudi Arabia and other countries are also pouring money into these efforts, as small businesses rack up debt and take financial risks to join the frenzy.
However, terrestrial data centers increasingly face limitations. In many locations, projects do not have enough available power to meet computing needs. Local opposition has also grown over whether data centers increase utility bills and worsen water shortages.
This has led to more creative – some might say hopeful – thinking with space data centers. Technologists and scientists have studied this idea and concluded that some version of these projects might be possible in the coming decades. But skeptics say the proposals defy physics and would be astronomically expensive.
Tech luminaries like Musk have also recently made comments about space data centers on a much larger scale than current research suggests, said Pierre Lionnet, a space economist and director of Eurospace, a trade association. “It’s completely insane,” he said.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduced the idea of space data centers in the 1960s. In the 1980s, the concept of “data repositories” in space appeared in science fiction stories. Over the past decade, the notion of space-based data centers that could power modern AI has also emerged.
The main advantage of building a data center in space is abundant energy, with access to the sun almost 24/7 and no clouds to obstruct the project’s solar panels, Johnston said. There are also fewer environmental regulations than on Earth, not to mention fewer neighbors who object to their enforcement or complain about electricity bills.
But feasibility depends on whether it becomes cheaper to launch materials into space and whether technical problems such as radiation and cooling can be solved in the meantime. Experts are divided on the question of how soon these conditions can be met.
“In business terms, it’s plausible,” said Phil Metzger, a physics professor at the University of Central Florida and a former NASA physicist. “This has been an evolving discussion.”
Data centers in space would be different from football stadium-sized facilities on Earth. Most business models like Starcloud look like large satellites with a cluster of servers housing AI chips at the center of miles of solar panels to power them.
Data centers are expected to be rebuilt every five years, when computer chips are typically replaced, Starcloud’s Johnston said. They would be visible at dawn and dusk from Earth, he said, appearing in the sky about a quarter of the width of the moon.
But today it is very expensive to create space data centers. A kilogram of material costs about $8,000 to launch into space, Lionnet said. The cheapest rate – around $2,000 per kilogram – is offered by rocket maker SpaceX, he added. Individual server racks in a data center can weigh more than 1,000 kilograms.
If space launch costs drop to around $200 per kilogram, the savings will start to make sense, Dr. Metzger said. He predicted it would take about a decade. In a Suncatcher research paper published in November, Google predicted that costs could fall to that level “by the mid-2030s,” comparing the timeline to that of its driverless robot taxis, which took 15 years to develop.
Others said they weren’t sure costs would come down in such a short time. “That’s like saying if we can reduce the price of a McDonald’s cheeseburger to 10 cents, we’ll buy a lot of them,” Lionnet said.
Modern computer chips and semiconductors are also not designed to withstand space radiation, which would harm their reliable computing capability, said Benjamin Lee, a professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
And just as space is freezing, it is also a void. This means there is no air to transfer heat from the AI chips. To cool the chips, data centers would instead need large radiator panels to disperse the heat.
Such obstacles haven’t stopped people like Musk, who runs SpaceX and artificial intelligence startup xAI.
Musk began engaging with others about space data centers in November on X, the social media platform he owns, saying “serious scaling of AI” needed to “be done in space.” In another article, he envisioned building 300 gigawatts of space data centers, which would require more than half the energy the United States consumes in a year.
Bret Johnsen, SpaceX’s chief financial officer, said in a letter to shareholders last month that the company would consider an IPO next year, in part to raise money for projects such as “AI data centers in space.”
SpaceX and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
Tom Mueller, a former SpaceX executive who believes humans will reach the limits of Earth’s energy sources by 2040, said Musk and other AI executives were talking about space data centers in part for financial reasons.
“The hottest thing to invest in right now is AI, and the second hottest thing is space,” Mueller said. “Now they are converging.”
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