[spikels]

It has been widely reported for weeks that SpaceX is planning to go public in a few months. The reason is they have big plans to run a vast network of AI servers in orbit and will need to raise a massive amount of funding. xAI merger fits with that plan. I'd assume SpaceX still plans to go public.

Was ignored on HN but here's an article explaining:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/after-years-of-resisti...

[kevin_thibedeau]

> a vast network of AI servers in orbit

That story makes no technical sense. There's no benefit to doing this. Nobody should believe it any more than boots on Mars by 2030.

[colinbartlett]

Or any more than "full self driving" by 2017.

[ru552]

sure it does, Bezo's space company and Google are both planning the same

Here's Sundar talking about doing it by 2027: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-project-suncatcher-su...

[airza]

it wasn't ignored on HN, there were many articles correctly noting that building data centers in space is a stupid stupid idea because cooling things there is infeasible

[spikels]

Google, Blue Origin and at least 5 other smaller companies have announced plans to build data centers in space. My understanding is the cooling issue is not the show stopper you assume.

[woah]

Was doing some back of the envelope math with chatGPT so take it with a grain of salt, but it sounds like in ideal conditions a radiator of 1m square could dissipate 300w. If this is the case, then it seems like you could approach a viable solution if putting stuff in space was free. What i can't figure out is how the cost of launch makes sense and what the benefit over building it on the ground could be

[kortex]

lol WHAT?

AI datacenters are bottlenecked by power, bandwidth, cooling, and maintenance. Ok sure maybe the Sun provides ample power, but if you are in LEO, you still have to deal with Earth's shadow, which means batteries, which means weight. Bandwidth you have via starlink, fine. But cooling in space is not trivial. And maintenance is out, unless they are also planning some kooky docking astromech satellite repair robot ecosystem.

Maybe the Olney's lesions are starting to take their toll.

Weirdest freaking timeline.

[crote]

The shadow thing can be solved by using a sun-synchronous orbit. See for example the TRACE solar observation satellite, which used a dawn/dusk orbit to maintain a constant view of the sun.

Cooling, on the other hand? No way in hell.