Eric Schmidt Apparently Bought Relativity Space To Put Data Centers in Orbit (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0177267083
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/05/02/1839250/eric-schmidt-apparently-bought-relativity-space-to-put-data-centers-in-orbit
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/05/eric-schmidt-apparently-bought-relativity-space-to-put-data-centers-in-orbit/
> In the nearly two months since former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt acquired Relativity Space, the billionaire has not said much publicly about his plans for the launch company. However, his intentions for Relativity now appear to be increasingly clear: He wants to have the capability to launch a significant amount of computing infrastructure into space.
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> We know this because Schmidt appeared before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce during a hearing in April, speaking on the future of AI and US competitiveness. Among the topics raised then was the need for more electricity -- both renewable and non-renewable -- to power data centers that will facilitate the computing needs for AI development and applications. Schmidt noted that an average nuclear power plant in the United States generates 1 gigawatt of power.
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> "People are planning 10 gigawatt data centers," Schmidt said. "Gives you a sense of how big this crisis is. Many people think that the energy demand for our industry will go from 3 percent to 99 percent of total generation. One of the estimates that I think is most likely is that data centers will require an additional 29 gigawatts of power by 2027, and 67 more gigawatts by 2030. These things are industrial at a scale that I have never seen in my life."
[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/05/eric-schmidt-apparently-bought-relativity-space-to-put-data-centers-in-orbit/
Largest power supply in space (Score:4, Insightful)
The largest power supply in space is the ISS solar panel array, supplying around 100 kilowatt, only ten millionths of the 10 gigawatt data centre quoted in the article. Even so, the panels are the size of a football field. So yeah, good luck with that.
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> The largest power supply in space is the ISS solar panel array, supplying around 100 kilowatt, only ten millionths of the 10 gigawatt data centre quoted in the article. Even so, the panels are the size of a football field.
Even assuming the energy demands are met somehow, all that energy eventually would turn into heat which would need to be dissipated away.
In orbit, having to rely only on radioactive heat transfer instead of much more efficient conduction/convection, dissipating enough of that heat away to keep the datacenter's temperature within reasonable limits would be completely unrealistic.
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s/radioactive/radiative
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Exactly. It is utterly bonkers. It makes no sense on so many levels.
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The largest power supply in space
Is probably a star.
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Negative, although I approve of your pedantry. In terms of instantaneous radiated power, the largest power supply in space is a black hole collision. The largest observed so far was also the first, named GW150914. It radiated over 10^49 watts, temporarily exceeding the output of the rest of observable universe.
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"over 10^49 watts, temporarily exceeding the output of the rest of observable universe."
Ping times to any data center powered by colliding black holes would make it impractical.
What would that power produce exactly? (Score:2)
What economic productivity could that much compute possibly create? People can only jerk off to so much AI porn.
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I'd assume that between AI and Bitcoin mining, people can find a use for any amount of computing power.
Why you'd want to put all those computers into space, OTOH, is beyond me. The solar power available in space is strong and continuous, sure, but the costs of getting the equipment up there and keeping it serviced and running are so high that just about any kind of ground-based power would be orders of magnitude cheaper.
Chips (Score:3)
Just from a technology perspective, are there any of the bleeding-edge chip processes that yield radiation-hardened parts, or parts that take the kind of vibration that goes with launch to orbit? TTBOMK, and I'd love to hear from experts, the military is still sticking with 28nm parts for weapon systems. Can anyone even build a competitive AI or cloud data center with 28nm parts these days?
Maybe we don't need 10 gigawatt data centers (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite the crisis they've manufactured there. Maybe we just don't need this sort of pervasive AI that these guys envision. Actually they envision the money coming in. The technology itself is just a vehicle. The older I get the more in favor I am of the Butlerian Jihad.
AI is a fantastic tool, but given the choice between having clean water and electricity, or AI, I'd prefer meeting humanity's basic needs.Plus a little work and actual creativity never hurt anyone.
Data centers in space... not cheap... (Score:2, Insightful)
First of all, with all the space debris, unless one sticks the data center way up there, it is likely to get perforated by space debris, especially when Kessler Syndrome hits.
Then, there are other issues:
Power? Solar isn't going to cut it. It will need a nuclear reactor. That will work for a number of years, but what then? It can't be deorbited unless one wants to leave a radioactive cloud across a good chunk of the globe. Using a heat shield, it might be deorbited, but what happens if some software bu
Re: Data centers in space... not cheap... (Score:2)
Seriously there is no engineering benefit to the vast expense and difficulty in putting compute in orbit. The power supplies are ON EARTH, cooling in space is damn near impossible (radiative only), servicing/hw upgrades untenable, There is obviously a reason, but whatever it is it is not technical
LOL (Score:3)
So much stupid. You would need solar panels the size of Texas (maybe even bigger) to create that kind of power output. Where do these AI bros come up with this shit?
10 Gigawatts? (Score:2)
Where does the heat go?
Only someone who knows exactly -zero- about space would think thermal management in space is easy. Or that much heat is even possible to get rid of.
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Fortunately the two problems with the scheme cancel perfectly. There is no way to generate even megawatts in space, and there is no way to dissipate megawatts in space, for any practical space station size in the foreseeable future.
and hit your FAP at one day and be slowed down to (Score:2)
and hit your FAP at one day and be slowed down to T1 speeds for the rest of the mouth
has anyone calculated cooling impacts? (Score:4, Interesting)
Both the production of that much electricity and the consumption of that much electrical power has to generate a shitload of heat. I guess a data center in space would not have quite the same cooling problems as one on Earth. BUT that would require careful design to make sure the heat radiates off the back of the solar panels. How big would those cooling fins have to be?
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> How big would those cooling fins have to be?
Cooling fins don't work in vacuum.
Cooling in space is hard. Harder than on Earth because you don't have an atmosphere, so even though space isn't hot, it's not cold either. It's more like a huge insulator. So, for an example, you have a 10GW nuclear reactor generating power, you need to cool it before we even begin talking about the datacenter it will be powering.
How do you emit any serious part of that 10GW out of the space datacenter? The mechanism we h
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How do you dump heat when you are in a vacuum?
A soup thermos is a vacuum bottle for a reason.
Cooling in space is HARD
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How does one move heat? There are three ways. Conduction, but there is nothing touching the heat source in orbit so that won't work. Convection to a fluid. Oops, space is a vacuum, no fluids.
That leaves radiation. That will work, but "Stefan-Boltzmann law, states that the total radiant heat power emitted from a surface is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature."
How hot can you get these chips again? I didn't think so.
"That's no moon, that's the heat sink for the AI server!"
"Gives you a sense of how big this crisis is." (Score:1)
A crisis entirely of their own making, and completely avoidable.
I am sure they did the math⦠(Score:2)
â¦on the failure rates of storage devices and switches, how many multiples of everything you would need to have enough redundancy to make this thing last long enough to make money on itâ¦. Ok, but your SaaS and cloud storage is 15x the cost of your competitors. Yes, but did you consider that yours will be SPACE DATA?
Superconductive microprocessors (Score:2)
I've thought about many things and to maximize the amount of computing power in orbit, it will be wise to invest to further [1]the development of superconductive microprocessors [ieee.org] to maximize the amount of processing power per gram.
It seems he believes his own bullshit about AI despite industry giants already realizing that building a zillion datacenters isn't going to get them better AGI faster and that people don't really want the bullshit machines known as LLMs.
[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/new-superconductor-microprocessor-yields-a-substantial-boost-in-efficiency
Data centers in orbit... (Score:2)
Sure. It's expensive, but if you have enough solar panels and the right orbit, you have eternal power for free after the initial investment.
What you don't have is easy cooling, nor low data latency. And you have to deal with high energy radiation.
Out of all the issues, the cooling issue is probably the largest obstacle. The idea of a real datacenter in orbit is just stupid.
Re: the end can't come soon enough (Score:2)
You are aware we decoded the entire proteome yes?