Demand for the computing power that undergirds AI models — “compute,” in the lingo of the industry — has skyrocketed.
Tech giants are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to construct massively resource-intensive data centers across the country, but the aging power grid and an increasingly resistant public are quickly turning these expansion efforts into nightmare.
As an alternative, many AI companies — including Elon Musk’s SpaceX — are vowing to move the entire affair into Earth’s orbit, saying their orbital data centers will harvest the Sun’s energy around the clock and convert it into raw computing power.
But the emerging consensus is that the plan isn’t just overly ambitious; it would require several technological revolutions to overcome glaring engineering challenges.
A scathing takedown video — a collaboration between Irish aeronautical engineer Brian McManus from the YouTube channel Real Engineering and tech publication IEEE Spectrum — discusses the many pain points of Starcloud, a Y combinator company that raised $170 million earlier this year to develop data center spacecraft with the help of SpaceX, and how the white paper outlining the project feels far more like it was dreamed up by an AI than a team of human experts.
“It really seems like anyone with some renders and a white paper written by someone being gassed up by an overly agreeable AI can get VC funding these days,” McManus argued. “Billionaires will attempt to pull the rug over your eyes and convince you that this technology makes total sense, but reality is, this technology is dumb.”
The scathing rebuke comes not long after SpaceX’s IPO, which turned the rocket company into one of the most valuable companies in the world over night. A huge chunk of its multitrillion-dollar valuation is tied up in Musk’s orbital data center vision, setting enormous stakes — and once again illustrating how much Wall Street is leaning on the richest man in the world’s beliefs, despite his abysmal track record when it comes to making good on his promises.
The engineering challenges of building out a constellation of enormous data centers in space are numerous.
For one, keeping piping hot AI hardware cool as it’s pushed to its limits is extremely difficult and requires sophisticated equipment even here on Earth. In the near-vacuum of space, it’s even harder, as all of that heat can’t simply escape, requiring an extensive network of pipes running coolants, presumably along the rows of solar arrays, according to McManus.
In the case of coolant fluids like glycol, each data center would have to pump over 150,000 pounds of the stuff per second, which is like “emptying an Olympic swimming pool in 40 seconds” — rates only common among gravity-fed hydroelectric dams.
To achieve an advertised capacity of five gigawatts of compute, Starcloud is looking to go big. Each data center, including its enormous array of solar panels, would cover 1.6 square miles, nearly 5,000 times the surface area of the International Space Station’s panels.
The mass could therefore balloon quickly thanks to the required cooling hardware.
“Even ignoring the pumps, coolant, radiation shielding, fuel, inertia wheels, structures and other stuff, Starcloud’s station exceeds a 113 million kilograms,” McManus argued in the video.
That’s “more than an aircraft carrier sitting in orbit,” he said. “More than six times the total mass launched into space in history.”
All of that surface area could open up these satellites to damage from the millions of items of space debris already cluttering our planet’s busy orbit. Even the smallest pieces could punch a hole in the panels, requiring costly repairs greatly complicated by the necessary journey into space.
It’s a very real problem SpaceX is already all too familiar with. The company revealed that its Starlink network of internet satellites had to perform 300,000 collision avoidance maneuvers in 2025 alone.
And on top of all that, sending even crunched data through the emptiness of space could require extensive oversight.
“Ionizing particles passing through satellites will burn out a transistor or flip a bit of information stored inside,” McManus explained. “This would result in the mother of all AI hallucinations without a software constantly checking results.” Existing computers on board the ISS have to run redundant calculations and compare results to “weed out corrupted data.”
The price tag for the envisioned Starcloud project also appear to be pulled out of thin air and are “overoptimistic on launch weights and launch costs,” McManus argued.
Maintaining the enormous network alone would also be a massive and costly undertaking. The lifespan of current AI chips is only two to four years — and that’s on Earth, where degradation is far less of an issue when compared to the extreme environment of space.
In short, Starcloud appears to be serving as an AI-pilled billionaire’s pipe dream inherently designed to appease on-edge investors.
“This is just one early rushed concept to fundraise and move on,” McManus concluded. “In the ever evolving world of tech, first movers are being heavily rewarded.”
More on orbital data centers: Elon Musk’s Orbital Data Centers Are Staggeringly Huge
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