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Does It Make Sense To Put Data Centers In Space? Can They Really Cost Less To Operate?

Scott Manley · 502.7K views · 2024-09-09 · 16:37

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Overview

Scott Manley analyzes the idea of putting data centers in orbit, prompted by Lumen Orbit's funding. He examines the claimed advantage of constant solar power against launch cost, cooling and mass.

On Hacker News

Recommended in orbital data center threads as a sober explanation of why the idea doesn't work out economically or thermally.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2024–2025

Topics

Space exploration & spaceflightCloud, DevOps & reliability
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spacedata centersscott manleycoolinglaunch costs

What people said

freefaler · 2025-12 · Recommendation

The great Scott Manley did a video about that: [VIDEO] basically it doesn't make sense with current technologiesa and even with Starship's proposed specs/price it won't be profitable. Check it out...

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Ataraxic · 2025-12 · Recommendation

Scott Manley had a video about this last year. [VIDEO] The short of it is that cooling is likely the biggest problem, given you will need to pump the heat to the backside and radiate it away, and the amount of mass you will need to dedicate to cooling works against deployments and increases the cost per unit significantly. Not to mention, the idea of these huge deployments runs into potential space debris issues. Whenever one of these ventures actually manages to launch a proof of concept, I think we'll be able to quickly discern if there is actually a near-future here.

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shantara · 2025-05 · Recommendation

Scott Manley has published a video a few months ago explaining why putting data centers in space is an absolutely terrible idea. Lumen Orbit, the company mentioned, is a former name of Starcloud. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Scott Manley, played through YouTube.

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