Lumen Orbit - Data Centers in Space

[Michel Van]

The company Lumen Orbit want to put Data servers,
to use the abundant solar energy, cooling, and the ability to freely scale up in space.
launch of Prototype hardware is set for may 2025 launch of first micro data center in 2026
once Starship goes into commercial service they build the 5GW Data server in Low orbit

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T--N58vwoo


Source:

Launch YC: Lumen Orbit ð Data Centers in Space | Y Combinator

Lumen Orbit is building data centers in space to make use of 24/7 solar energy and passive cooling.

www.ycombinator.com

 

[aim9xray]

I suppose that would rule out visiting your CoLo server to reboot?

 

[TomS]

The company Lumen Orbit want to put Data servers,
to use the abundant solar energy, cooling, and the ability to freely scale up in space.
launch of Prototype hardware is set for may 2025 launch of first micro data center in 2026
once Starship goes into commercial service they build the 5GW Data server in Low orbit

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T--N58vwoo


Source:

Launch YC: Lumen Orbit ð Data Centers in Space | Y Combinator

Lumen Orbit is building data centers in space to make use of 24/7 solar energy and passive cooling.

www.ycombinator.com

Abundant cooling? In space? Are they aware that this is functionally like building a server in a thermos bottle?

 

[Michel Van]

Abundant cooling? In space? Are they aware that this is functionally like building a server in a thermos bottle?

i'm afraid not, there Data Center concept art has no radiators...

 

[Justo Miranda]

In my opinion this thing does not seem very safe to preserve or exchange data, regardless of temperature changes it would need a very heavy radiation shielding... What is the advantage?

 

[Grey Havoc]

Not to mention little things like ASATS....

 

[TheKutKu]

Not-A-Starship! With delta flaps...
Of course, you don't want the solar powered data center to be in such a low orbit.

 

[TomS]

View attachment 739787

Not-A-Starship! With delta flaps...
Of course, you don't want the solar powered data center to be in such a low orbit.

You do if you're trying to manage latency, which is kind of a big deal for servers.

This is such a dumb idea.

 

[Dilandu]

What is the advantage?

They can't be physically seized by police, and their destruction would cause too many international outcry to seriously consider it as police measure.

 

[Dilandu]

You do if you're trying to manage latency, which is kind of a big deal for servers.

This is such a dumb idea.

Well, it could use polar orbit parallel to terminator, to stay in sunlight as much as possible.

 

[Yellow Palace]

They can't be physically seized by police, and their destruction would cause too many international outcry to seriously consider it as police measure.

Also, the locals can't complain about the size/noise/power requirements for the data centre. Which is also becoming an issue. Though even for a 'small' data centre you're talking about megawatts of power, and one in space would need even more to run the cooling.

To the extent that this is an idea, rather than merely a press release, I suspect it's a reaction to it being increasingly difficult to find sites that are suitable for, and willing to accept, terrestrial data centres. Microsoft was doing some work on subsea data centres for similar reasons, which seemed pretty promising.

 

[TheKutKu]

They can't be physically seized by police, and their destruction would cause too many international outcry to seriously consider it as police measure.

On the other hand, the destruction can be done by any motivated and skilled decently sized team no matter the country.

 

[TomS]

Not to mention little things like ASATS....

On the other hand, the destruction can be done by any motivated and skilled decently sized team no matter the country.

ASAT is hardly a trivial undertaking and can't be done by a small team, no matter how motivated or skilled. It takes a moderately large pile of money, the kind of money associated with nation-state actors.

There are four countries with demonstrated ASAT capacity, and I can think of maybe four more that could do it in relatively short order, as a national effort.

 

[TheKutKu]

ASAT is hardly a trivial undertaking and can't be done by a small team, no matter how motivated or skilled. It takes a moderately large pile of money, the kind of money associated with nation-state actors.

There are four countries with demonstrated ASAT capacity, and I can think of maybe four more that could do it in relatively short order, as a national effort.

ASAT and Targeting a thin, City sized LEO target with no maneuvering capability are two completely different thing.

Basically any decently sized sounding rocket does the job of significantly damaging the array and particularly polluting its orbit.

So this needs active space based defense, laser won't cut it at diverting the mass away from the kilometer-sized target so it has to be missiles.

Putting this further away, say typical MEO GPS-level orbit, solve so many problem, much cleaner orbit, much more illumination, much harder to reach and target, you just have to accept 100-200 ms latency.

 

[Dilandu]

On the other hand, the destruction can be done by any motivated and skilled decently sized team no matter the country.

This required such team to either have access to space-launch capabilities, or at least ASAT-capable missiles and equipment. While it's not impossible, it's sufficiently unlikely. And any non-government group THAT large and rich would clearly have better things to do than shooting down orbital data centers.

Basically any sounding rocket does the job of significantly damaging the array and particularly polluting its orbit.

It would require extremely precise calculations and decent tracking capability, to intercept orbiting object with sounding rocket. The size isn't as important as velocity; the slightest mistake of target movement calculation or the slighters deviation of the rocket would cause clear miss.

 

[Dilandu]

So this needs active space based defense, laser won't cut it at diverting the mass away from the kilometer-sized target so it has to be missiles.

Well, more like mines. A kinetic interceptor with very limited supply of delta-v, basically designed only to stand in the way of incoming missile.

 

[Michel Van]

more i read the comments here,
more becomes this project very doubtful...

 

[southwestforests]

Hey, let's see what else might be out there about orbital data centers,

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/27/europe-wants-to-deploy-data-centers-into-space-study-says.html

Within that,

The facilities that the study explored launching into space would orbit at an altitude of around 1,400 kilometers (869.9 miles) — about three times the altitude of the International Space Station. Dumestier explained that ASCEND would aim to deploy 13 space data center building blocks with a total capacity of 10 megawatts in 2036, in order to achieve the starting point for cloud service commercialization.

Each building block — with a surface area of 6,300 square meters — includes capacity for its own data center service and is launched within one space vehicle, he said.

In order to have a significant impact on the digital sector's energy consumption, the objective is to deploy 1,300 building blocks by 2050 to achieve 1 gigawatt, according to Dumestier.

Beyond the cloud: The concept of orbital data centres

Traditional data centres consume vast amounts of electricity. To address this issue, could the concept of orbital data centres be the answer?

datacentremagazine.com

The Space Review: Prospects for orbital data centers

That one has an interesting quote given some comments here,
(and why does the old Battletech miniatures game suddenly come to mind when talking thermal management?)

Terrestrial high-performance compute is heavy, primarily because of liquid thermal control systems. These need to be optimized. A continued reduction in space launch costs, coupled with advances in lightweight power and thermal management solutions, will be the key factors to watch in making orbital data centers practical.

Are Space-Based Data Centers the Future or Science Fiction?

In this blog, we'll explore the potential challenges and opportunities associated with space-based data centers

www.datacenters.com

 

[TomS]

i'm afraid not, there Data Center concept art has no radiators...

Having gone to actually read their prospectus, they do talk about cooling, and argue that they need about 1/3 the area for cooling as they use for solar power collection. I'm not sold on their math, but at least they are aware of the issue.

 

[publiusr]

Seeing how some aerospace collections that we thought were safe in libraries--I say charge the big ISPs, put only aerospace data in them--and make it free for all.