February 3, 2026
Servers in space, takes on fire
Data centers in space makes no sense
Internet roasts “space data centers”: heat, power and lag kill the dream
TLDR: SpaceX’s mega‑move with xAI reignited a plan to put AI data centers in orbit, but commenters slammed it as physics‑defying: too hot, too power‑hungry, too laggy, and too risky for space junk. A few argued it could be war‑proof and global, but most called it a sci‑fi headache, not a strategy.
SpaceX’s reported $1.25T tie-up with xAI to launch AI server farms into orbit had the internet asking one thing: have we tried turning Earth off and on again? The CivAI blog called the concept a “complete fantasy,” citing impossible scale, upgrade nightmares, and space junk—but the comments turned it into a full-on roast.
The loudest chorus: heat and power make this a non‑starter. One user did the back‑of‑napkin math, saying Earth data centers can gulp 100 megawatts while the biggest space solar arrays might spit out a fraction of that. Another summed it up as, “the worst place to put a data center,” explaining that in space you can’t blow hot air away; you have to slowly radiate it. Cue the memes: “Let’s just build a giant heatsink to space and cool the whole planet,” joked one poster. Others took a darker spin, arguing the plan only makes sense for war—harder to hit, harder to break into, and immune to nuke‑triggered power surges. Meanwhile, a gamer voice cut through the noise: “Okay but what’s the Minecraft lag from orbit?”
Even with a Google study dreaming of 2035 viability if launch costs crash, the crowd’s verdict was clear: cool idea, but physics, debris, and reality say nope.
Key Points
- •The article critiques the feasibility of space-based data centers despite industry interest and reported corporate moves.
- •A Google study proposes an 81-satellite AI constellation, potentially cost-competitive at ~$200/kg launch costs by 2035 if Starship succeeds.
- •Frontier AI workloads require hundreds of thousands to millions of GPUs, implying vast satellite deployments far exceeding current orbital counts.
- •Large-scale satellite fleets raise collision and debris risks (Kessler syndrome) and are difficult to upgrade compared to terrestrial data centers.
- •Even with assumed solutions to radiation, cooling, latency, and launch costs, orbital data centers must prove cost-effective relative to ground facilities.