[Starlink] How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space | NVIDIA Blog

[Starlink] How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space | NVIDIA Blog

[Hesham ElBakoury]

We may run out of space on earth to accommodate DC AI infrastructure.

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/starcloud/

Hesham

[Starlink] Re: How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space | NVIDIA Blog

[J Pan]

not physical space, but energy harvesting and heat dissipating might
be more favorable in space. space itself can generate enough data to
be cranked there, instead of beaming down
--
J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan

On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 7:52 AM Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> We may run out of space on earth to accommodate DC AI infrastructure.
>
> https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/starcloud/
>
> Hesham
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net

[Starlink] Re: How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space | NVIDIA Blog

[Hesham ElBakoury]

There is also land concern.

"State and local resistance to datacenters is rising sharply, with $98
billion in projects blocked or delayed from late March to June as
communities push back over energy use, higher electricity bills, and land
concerns. A study by Data Center Watch shows opposition groups in 17 states
successfully delaying most projects they protest, prompting lawmakers to
tighten rules, reconsider subsidies, and question whether data centers
deliver enough local economic benefit to outweigh their growing community
and infrastructure impacts."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/state-local-opposition-new-data-centers-gaining-steam-rcna243838

Hesham



On Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 8:10 AM J Pan <Pan@uvic.ca> wrote:

> not physical space, but energy harvesting and heat dissipating might
> be more favorable in space. space itself can generate enough data to
> be cranked there, instead of beaming down
> --
> J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA,
> Web.UVic.CA/~pan
>
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 7:52 AM Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >
> > We may run out of space on earth to accommodate DC AI infrastructure.
> >
> > https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/starcloud/
> >
> > Hesham
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
>

[Starlink] Re: How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space | NVIDIA Blog

[J Pan]

yes, google can always find evidence on the internet to support any
argument ;-) regardless, tech giants need to think about whether they
use electricity effectively and efficiently as well
--
J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan

On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 8:35 AM Hesham ElBakoury <helbakoury@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is also land concern.
>
> "State and local resistance to datacenters is rising sharply, with $98 billion in projects blocked or delayed from late March to June as communities push back over energy use, higher electricity bills, and land concerns. A study by Data Center Watch shows opposition groups in 17 states successfully delaying most projects they protest, prompting lawmakers to tighten rules, reconsider subsidies, and question whether data centers deliver enough local economic benefit to outweigh their growing community and infrastructure impacts."
>
> https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/state-local-opposition-new-data-centers-gaining-steam-rcna243838
>
> Hesham
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 8:10 AM J Pan <Pan@uvic.ca> wrote:
>>
>> not physical space, but energy harvesting and heat dissipating might
>> be more favorable in space. space itself can generate enough data to
>> be cranked there, instead of beaming down
>> --
>> J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 7:52 AM Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink
>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > We may run out of space on earth to accommodate DC AI infrastructure.
>> >
>> > https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/starcloud/
>> >
>> > Hesham
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> > To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net

[Starlink] Re: How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space | NVIDIA Blog

[Kenneth Porter]

We've been talking about space-based solar power stations feeding cities 
since the 1970s. (I was in the L5 Society in my teens then.) We thought 
this would be a good excuse to mine the moon for raw materials, build 
manufacturing cities in the L4 and L5 Lagrange points, and construct 
gigantic orbital solar arrays that would send the energy to Earth by 
microwave. (Lifting the raw material from the moon is practically free, 
using electromagnetic catapults instead of the expensive rockets needed 
for Earth-sourced materials.)

The modern idea of putting data centers in orbit might be an even more 
practical driver to move industry into high orbit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

[Starlink] Re: How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space | NVIDIA Blog

[Gert Doering]

hi,

On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 08:09:48AM -0800, J Pan via Starlink wrote:
> not physical space, but energy harvesting and heat dissipating might
> be more favorable in space. space itself can generate enough data to
> be cranked there, instead of beaming down

Physics suggest "heat dissipation is extremely hard in vacuum".

Energy harvesting on the scales that these AI DCs need is also not
exactly trivial - under ideal conditions a square m will see something
like 1.3kW of influx energy.  So for people talking about "gigawatts"
of DC power, you'd need a square kilometer of solar collector, with
good efficiency...

Gert Doering
        -- NetMaster
-- 
have you enabled IPv6 on something today...?

SpaceNet AG                      Vorstand: Sebastian v. Bomhard,
                                           Karin Schuler, Sebastian Cler
Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14        Aufsichtsratsvors.: A. Grundner-Culemann
D-80807 Muenchen                 HRB: 136055 (AG Muenchen)
Tel: +49 (0)89/32356-444         USt-IdNr.: DE813185279

[Starlink] Re: How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space | NVIDIA Blog

[J Pan]

yes, that's why "might" ;-) and according to starcloud's
visualization, their solar panel (and heat dissipation on the other
side) is huge. whether it is feasible or sustainable, another story
--
J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan

On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 8:42 AM Gert Doering <gert@space.net> wrote:
>
> hi,
>
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 08:09:48AM -0800, J Pan via Starlink wrote:
> > not physical space, but energy harvesting and heat dissipating might
> > be more favorable in space. space itself can generate enough data to
> > be cranked there, instead of beaming down
>
> Physics suggest "heat dissipation is extremely hard in vacuum".
>
> Energy harvesting on the scales that these AI DCs need is also not
> exactly trivial - under ideal conditions a square m will see something
> like 1.3kW of influx energy.  So for people talking about "gigawatts"
> of DC power, you'd need a square kilometer of solar collector, with
> good efficiency...
>
> Gert Doering
>         -- NetMaster
> --
> have you enabled IPv6 on something today...?
>
> SpaceNet AG                      Vorstand: Sebastian v. Bomhard,
>                                            Karin Schuler, Sebastian Cler
> Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14        Aufsichtsratsvors.: A. Grundner-Culemann
> D-80807 Muenchen                 HRB: 136055 (AG Muenchen)
> Tel: +49 (0)89/32356-444         USt-IdNr.: DE813185279

[Starlink] Re: How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space | NVIDIA Blog

[Sebastian Moeller]

> On 19. Nov 2025, at 17:09, J Pan via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> not physical space, but energy harvesting and heat dissipating might

All you can do is radiate heat away, there is no real convection in space, and vacuum is a hell of a thermal insulator.

The energy collection might be favourable if you ride close to the day/night terminus, but that means you are now (even with two clusters one on the morning and one on the evening side) on average a eighth of the earth diameter away from any given point on the earth, aka from the consumers of the processed data.

IMHO this is a nice engineering challenge, but lacks real utility, as you are mostly ending up solving problems you would not have if you would build a boring data center on the surface ;)


> be more favorable in space. space itself can generate enough data to
> be cranked there, instead of beaming down

So for all of the space agencies or the satellite intelligence crowd?

Looks pretty much like a solution in search of a problem.


Regards
	Sebastian

> --
> J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan
> 
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 7:52 AM Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>> 
>> We may run out of space on earth to accommodate DC AI infrastructure.
>> 
>> https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/starcloud/
>> 
>> Hesham
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list -- starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> To unsubscribe send an email to starlink-leave@lists.bufferbloat.net

[Starlink] Re: How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space | NVIDIA Blog

[David Lang]

Sebastian Moeller wrote:

> Looks pretty much like a solution in search of a problem.

that's my take on it, at least in terms of a single monolithic station. One 
thing that nobody here mentioned is the problem in stabilizing such large 
structures, occellations, orbital raising burns, etc.

Elon Musk proposed a slightly different take, take the platform that they will 
be using for their full size v2 (or v3) starlinks and add more processing 
instead of as many data links. a bunch of those in a loose cluster instead of a 
tightly correlated cluster could be interesting (and far more likely)

David Lang

[Starlink] Re: How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space | NVIDIA Blog

[J Pan]

yes, we learned it in a hard way too
https://www.uvic.ca/ecs/news/cfar-spaceleo.php
--
J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan

On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 2:20 PM Michael Richardson <mcr@sandelman.ca> wrote:
>
>
> J Pan via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>     > not physical space, but energy harvesting and heat dissipating might
>
> Heat dissipation is very difficult in space.
>
>