Yet another Hacker News

Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space

16 points xnx 4 hours ago 19 comments

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/technology/google-suncatc... (https://archive.ph/BGFnP)

10xDev 4 hours ago | parent

And just like that Elon Musk shifted the overton window away from "unthinkable" on yet another topic.

GMoromisato 2 hours ago | parent

  It's physically impossible
  It's technically impossible
  It won't be profitable          <= You are here
  It's bad for the environment
  It needs to be nationalized

This is just a joke, obviously, but the debate over on ArsTechnica about Falcon 9 going away is all about how it needs to be nationalized.

zactato 1 hour ago | parent

I think one of the reasons for putting these in space is to move them beyond the borders of any national control.

GMoromisato 1 hour ago | parent

You can't launch from the US without the federal government giving you permission. And SpaceX does not have (nor are they planning) any launch pads outside the US. [And because of ITAR, I'm not even sure they'd be allowed to build one.]

However, I do think avoiding local control (state/city permits) is a reason for this.

edot 12 minutes ago | parent

Surely if this were the reason, you'd just put it in international waters?

GMoromisato 2 hours ago | parent

If data centers in space end up being economically viable, then I don't see how anyone can catch SpaceX. They are ten years ahead in both launch capability and satellite manufacturing.

gmerc 9 minutes ago | parent

That's the fun part, they don't need to be viable. It's just the excuse to shovel tons of money to Trump donors, by rerunning the scam that was SDI.

And they never will be because it's always going to be cheaper to build them on the ground.

zactato 1 hour ago | parent

How are they solving the heat dissipation issues?

xnx 1 hour ago | parent

No solution, but that is the crux of the problem. They probably need to make a radiator that 1000x smaller and lighter.

TPU: 100,000+ watts/square-meter

Radiator: ~300 watts/square-meter

https://youtu.be/ktdbUIZKeSE?t=76

JackSlateur 1 hour ago | parent

That's the neat part: you don't (ergo, this is yet another marketing crap)

lopsotronic 1 hour ago | parent

For real. It's an enormous problem solved only with 1) sheer scale, and 2) Science Fiction.

Both of those are expensive as hell, by the way.

Cooling via radiation follows Stefan–Boltzmann: P = εσAT⁴. Let's assume a good surface (emissivity ~0.9) at 300 K (27 °C) at 400 W per square meter per side. A flat panel radiating from both faces into deep space gets 800 W/m, not including the losses from, say, the Sun, or from IR coming off the Earth. Now, input power. Sunlight in orbit ~1,360 W/m², assume ~22% cell efficiency, we got 300 W/m². So each 1 MW compute, 3,300 m² of solar panel and minimum 1,200–1,500 m² of radiator.

In case ya didn't know - 1 MW is tiny from a present-day-datacenter perspective. It's like 8 racks. So we're talking orbital megastructures here, many many many square kilometers, and this is with all the best case assumptions, and magic radiator panels that never see the sun, or the earth, or the moon.

This is just the basic numbers here, by the way. There's a garbage truck full of other unsolvable problems if you poke your head in there.

Aside from the "Avoid Regulations" aspect, and the "Everything That Burns Deorbiting is Depreciation" aka "The Starlink Trick", I'm not sure what the hell the draw is.

tessierashpool 6 minutes ago | parent

there are two arguments for it.

one is marketing.

the other is that you could make tiny datacenters and flood the sky with them. in effect, not datacenters at all, but some kind of dataswarm coordinating at literal lightspeed via lasers.

they'd still be wildly expensive to deploy, and probably litter the orbit zone with fast-moving debris.

GMoromisato 48 minutes ago | parent

Please stop with this argument. This is one of the easiest problems to solve. Heat dissipation requires a radiator, which is just a dumb hunk of metal. All you need is a cheap way to launch mass to orbit, which is exactly what SpaceX (and Chinese companies) are doing.

The only valid argument against data centers in space is the economic cost. If the per megatoken price for space datacenters is higher than terrestrial, then this won't work.

But the price for terrestrial datacenters keeps going up and technology keeps dropping the price of space-based.

0cf8612b2e1e 12 minutes ago | parent

That is not a fake argument, but real physics. Yes, you can design out X kw can be dissipated by this much radiators, but that adds an enormous quantity of mass, more than the solar panels that feed it.

If you are trying to generate a profit, every extra kg puts you further in the red. It still costs over $1000/kg of mass to get into orbit.

mzajc 11 minutes ago | parent

> This is one of the easiest problems to solve. /../ All you need is a cheap way to launch mass to orbit.

So... not easy? I don't suppose we're at a point where you could reasonably send a large-enough radiator for a multi-gigawatt cluster into space?

teaearlgraycold 8 minutes ago | parent

It will never be cheaper to put compute into orbit. And costs for AI are dropping like a rock here on Earth.

devmor 6 minutes ago | parent

> Please stop with this argument. This is one of the easiest problems to solve. Heat dissipation requires a radiator, which is just a dumb hunk of metal.

Convective radiation does not happen in space and this challenge is far more significant than your comment implies. Rather than "a dumb hunk of metal", radiators for spacecraft are often made of ceramics and carbon laminates with higher IR emissivity than convective radiators made of simple metals.

From the article you're commenting on:

> The chips can operate for about 15 minutes in space before needing to be shut down so they can cool off, said Travis Beals, Google’s senior director of product management for Project Suncatcher.

The Thermal Control section on NASA's Small Spacecraft documentation center is quite an interesting read for this subject: https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/sst-soa/thermal-cont...

ML Infrastructure comes with some pros (larger emissive footprint) and cons (exponentially larger TDP) compared to the concerns there, but if you aren't familiar with the challenges of heat dissipation in space, please give it a read.

There's also a pretty interesting pop-sci article on cooling the Webb telescope, since it needs to be especially cold for its purpose. Not directly related, but may give insight into both challenges and solutions as well as well. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/science-overview/scien...

gmerc 10 minutes ago | parent

We don't. This is all cover for the militarisation of space, there's no real benefit that'd be ever economical to put a DC up in space when you could build one on the ground. The whole narrative exists to allow google to tap into the Golden Dome / Space force bucket of pork that's basically SDI II.

You don't need civilian scale compute in space, but you absolutely can put miliary application up there and get filthy rich, like Elon, who doesn't care if it ever works, because he's getting paid as taxi service to shoot stuff up.