November 29, 2025
Houston, we have hot takes
Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea
Engineers roast ‘GPU satellites’ as sci‑fi cosplay; commenters dunk on ‘vacuum cooling’
TLDR: A NASA vet says space datacenters won’t work: not enough power, brutal heat, and radiation flipping bits. Commenters mostly roast the idea, meme on “vacuum cooling,” and toy with a Moon‑base alternative—fun for sci‑fi, not a cost‑effective plan, which matters as AI hype meets physics.
The internet turned a sober takedown into a meme parade after a former NASA engineer (who also did time at Google) declared space datacenters a terrible, horrible, no good idea. The post lays it out in plain terms: solar power up there isn’t magic—an ISS‑sized array (NASA) barely feeds ~200 GPUs, while Earth facilities like OpenAI’s Norway build aim for 100,000. Nuclear? Not reactors—just tiny heat‑brick generators (RTGs) that spit out 50–150 watts (wiki), not even enough for one chip. And space isn’t “cold” the helpful way; there’s no air to carry heat away, so cooling becomes a nightmare. Oh, and radiation can flip bits in memory (that’s an SEU—single‑event upset), turning your AI into space junk mid‑sentence.
Cue the comments: Infinity315 says the whole idea reads like bad sci‑fi cosplay. kwertyoowiyop dubs “terrible, horrible, no good” the new “considered harmful,” and it sticks. The line that detonated the thread? yardie cackling at “the vacuum of space for cooling.” Engineers chimed in, backing the radiation/heat critique with war stories, while one contrarian, api, floated a Moon‑base compromise: bury pipes for heat, harvest near‑constant sunlight, batch tasks, accept the lag. The crowd loved the creativity, but the vibe stayed roast‑heavy: fun thought experiment, terrible business plan. Verdict from the peanut gallery: put the GPUs down, step away from the rocket, and stop LARPing as Space AWS.
Key Points
- •Space-based solar power is not substantially better than ground-based solar; atmospheric losses are limited.
- •The ISS’s solar array delivers just over 200 kW and measures ~2,500 m², requiring multiple Space Shuttle flights to deploy.
- •Estimated power need is ~1 kW per GPU; an ISS-scale array could power roughly 200 GPUs.
- •OpenAI’s planned Norway datacenter aims for ~100,000 GPUs, implying about 500 ISS-sized satellites would be needed to match capacity.
- •RTGs provide only 50–150 W, insufficient for a single GPU, and space cooling/thermal regulation is a significant challenge.