On the one hand, the systems he imagines of process data appeared relatively slowly to those of the earthly signature. They would be constantly bombed by radiation, and “obsoletescence would be a problem” because the manufacture of repuil or upgrades would be food. Hajimiri thinks that space data centers could, one day, be a bottle solution but hesitates to say when this day could be. “It would certainly be doable in a few years,” he said. “The question is how effective they would be and how profitable they would become.”
The idea of simply putting data centers in orbit is not limited to the offhor reflections of technicians or the deeper thought of academics. Even some voter officials in cities where companies like Amazon hope to build data centers raise the point. Tucson, Arizona, the member of the Nikki Lee council expressed his poetics on their potential during a hearing in August, in which the council unanimously Elected a data center offered in their city.
“Many people say that data centers do not belong to the desert,” said Lee. But “if this is really a national priority”, then the accent must be placed on “putting the dollars of federal research and development in the data centers that will exist in space. And it may have been crazy and a little science fiction, but it happens real. ”
It is true, but it is happy on an appraisal scale, not industrial. A startup called Starcloud hoped to launch a satellite box the size of a refrigerator in some Nvidia chips in August, but the launch date was postponed. Lonestar Data Systems won a miniature data center, Transporting early information like an Imagine Dragons songOn the moon for a few months August, although the landing has changed and daed in the attempt. Other launches are scheduled for the coming months. But it is “very difficult to predict how fast this idea will become economic after possible,” said Matthew Weinzierl, economist at Harvard University who studies market forces in space. “Spatial data centers may well have the use of niche, for example for the processing of space-based data and providing national security capacities,” he said. “To be a significant rival for land centers, however, they will have to compete in the cost and quality of service like anything else.”
For the moment, it is much more expenses to put in the data center in space than to put one, let’s say, Virginia Valley data centerwhere the demand for electricity was flowing in the next decade If you have remained unregulated. And as long as staying on Earth remains cheaper, companies motivated by profit will promote land expansion of data data.
However, there is a factor that could encourage Openai and others to turn to the head: there is not much regulation up there. The construction of data centers on land requires obtaining municipal license, and companies can be hampered by local governments, including world residents that the development of the data center could siphon their water, increase their electricity bills or overheat their planet. In space, there are no neighbors to complain, said Michelle Hanlon, political scientist and lawyer who runs the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi. “If you are an American company that seeks to put data centers in space, then the earliest will be best, before Congress is like” Oh, we must regulate this. “”
