Worried about your datacenter carbon footprint? Why not put it in orbit?

The European Commission is to carry out a feasibility study on putting datacenters into orbit as part of its wide-ranging Horizon Europe research program, and has now announced companies taking part in the project. Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between European aerospace and defence companies Thales and Leonardo, …

[Pascal Monett]

A daft idea

There is no atmosphere in space, so no aircooling is feasible. The only way to get rid of heat is by radiating it away.

Out of date after 5 years ? That's the lucky scenario. It's much more feasible that there will be a heat meltdown before that.

[Sampler]

Re: A daft idea

Who gives these people money? I mean really?

Computers don't work great in space due to effects usually protected by our atmosphere, they generate a lot of heat with nowhere to send it and they weigh a ton that you have to lift in to orbit and they require maintenance (sometimes percussive maintenance).

Whoever thought any of this was a good idea should have their crayons taken off them.

[Evil Auditor]

Re: A daft idea

Pointy-Haired Boss: "I want our data and stuff in the cloud."

"But... it already is?! We use Azure for this, AWS for that, and PhantasiCloud for all the rest."

"Okay, and where is it, I mean physically?"

"Well, there's one data centre in Ohio, another location in the Netherlands, and and and..."

"No, you don't understand (are you stupid, or what?), I want it IN THE CLOUD! My golf/fsck/whatever buddies tell me that they all put there stuff there and it's much better. So put it IN THE CLOUD, no matter what it costs!"

"M'kay, I'll see what I can do..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A daft idea

Pointy-Haired Boss: "I want our data and stuff in the cloud."

Pointy-Haired Bosses Boss: "Everyone uses the cloud. I want our data and stuff higher than the cloud."

[Agamemnon]

Re: A daft idea

I came gripe about why this is idea is crappym but the SubTitle and the first two comments covered my engineering twitching.

Also lag and latency.

MOAR crap in orbit.

And Bonus points for a nice data haven that only Big Players can afford and those would be juicy targets [supply chain, material, manufacturing, logistics, etc.] an adversary in a conflict. [Anti Satellite weapons are quite the rage witiih the Super Powers these days.] +++

This idea needs tossed n the bin as a Solution Looking For A Problem.

+++ Think of all the lost Pr0n *alone*.

[GruntyMcPugh]

I don't need an expensive feasibility study,....

... to know this is a really dumb idea. I mean really dumb. So totally dumb I'm struggling to see how people are even putting their name to this. So, a 1U server costs upwards of a few grand, depending on spec, but would cost 20 X that to get it into LEO, so three grand for the server, $60k+ just to get it into space, and that's before the R&D of the 'datacentre' that operates in the vacuum of space, and all the launch costs and energy requirements that go along with it, plus comms, and well, engineer visits.

[b0llchit]

Re: I don't need an expensive feasibility study,....

But telling your honourable colleagues that they are seriously hula-hula-bonka-bonka-ta-tu-ta-tu-mad is not a career improving move.

The correct handling is to profit from this stupid idea long enough to get settled for life. Then you get out, just before the real stupidity of the project hits the scandal and sensation newspaper(s).

[druck]

Re: I don't need an expensive feasibility study,....

Even if the launch costs weren't so high, you couldn't just launch standard 1U servers - a fully cabled up 19" rack isn't going to survive the g-forces and vibrations of rocket launch. It will all have to be specially designed kit at vastly more expense.

[Mike 137]

Continuity?

"examining whether datacenters can be put into orbit [using] optical communications to provide a data link with facilities on the ground"

In my experience of medium haul free space optical communication the big problems were aiming precision and transient obstructions. These were tough enough to deal with when we did it over a couple of km with the occasional pigeon crossing the path, but from even low Earth orbit there are so many ways the signal can be interrupted that it seems highly unlikely to be reliable enough for business purposes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Continuity?

Besides, think of the cost of the fibre!

Mind you, you could use it as a space elevator... that would make it easier when you need to swap hardware

[oiseau]

It's much more feasible that there will be ...

Indeed, downright stupid if you ask me.

There's a long list of things that can/will affect it before it starts to melt down, among them:

- man generated space rubbish

- small/tiny undetectable meteorites

- solar flares/radiation

- etc., etc.

... and last but not least, a strike from a weapon.

O.

[Crypto Monad]

Utter nonsense - even for the claimed goal

OK: they want to get to "net zero" carbon for data centres.

How many tons of fuel does it take to lift, say, one ton of server racks (plus batteries and solar panels plus radiation shielding) into orbit?

And how does that compare with the emissions for that same rack of servers on the ground, over 5 years, powered by any current representative power mix?

And what about the waste when this de-orbits?

Some ideas are just too stupid to spend real research money on. That doesn't stop people claiming it, but funding committees should have more sense.

[Dave Null]

Low carbon?

it needs a fucking rocket to get there.

Once there, there's zero cooling as there's no convective cooling in space.

Why?

[Tom Paine]

Re: Low carbon?

Not that it isn't a ridiculous idea, but actually radiative cooling is a long-established technology for spacecraft, crewed and otherwise.

[Bryan Hall]

High School Paper?

This is about as dumb as an idea as you can get. Some scared high school student (the world is going to end unless...) write this?

Net Zero is what you'll have in your bank account when your industry can't compete due to the high cost of "green" energy. It's already happening at scale in Europe.

Smart countries will ignore the climate scam and profit by importing those industries using reliable and low-cost hydrocarbons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: High School Paper?

Not so smart countries will build Drax power station powered by 'wood waste' then import thousands of tons of wood pellets from virgin (or near virgin) forests around the globe

[Andy The Hat]

Re: High School Paper?

"Not so smart countries will build Drax power station powered by 'wood waste' then import thousands of tons of wood pellets from virgin (or near virgin) forests around the globe"

Actually they built Drax on top of a coal mine with direct access to "clean coal" ... Nasty miners cost money so they shut the mine and imported open cast, brown "dirty coal" from Poland ... Nasty brown coal is not very green so they then converted 1/6 to burning wood as an "experiment" which they import from "not at all" virginal forests and they are assured that the forests are "fully replanted" as plantation monocultures ... So that's cleared that up then.

[khjohansen]

Re: "reliable and low-cost hydrocarbons"

Oh yeah, comes in a pipeline from Russia, will be even more affordable when NordStream 2 opens ... !

[codejunky]

Remember

This is a government study to figure out using green madness. The launch Co2 will probably be discounted by some clever guestimate of Co2 savings before it gets up there. Or just be ignored in the name of green. When it comes to green madness everything is flexible including the price

[midgepad]

LOX/H2

Tell us how much CO2 that produces.

[Old-dog]

Re: LOX/H2

How much heat would your launcher generate?

How much heat would the production of LOX/H2 generate?

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: LOX/H2

An entirely inconsequential amount compared to other heat sources. Such as the collective body heat of 8 billion humans.

[DJO]

Re: LOX/H2

It really depends on where you get your hydrogen from.

About 90% of industrially produced hydrogen is made by the catalytic breakdown of methane which releases the same amount of CO2 as burning it would. Then you need to cool and liquefy the hydrogen, guess what - that uses a huge amount of energy which has a definite carbon footprint.

You also need to liquefy and distill loads of air to get the liquid oxygen required which again is a hugely energy intensive operation.

So to answer your question of how much CO2 comes from a H2 O2 rocket? Directly - None. Indirectly - Far more than you thought.

[Vikingforties]

What are they smoking!

We've got countless useful things to be doing down here with the heat from DCs, all of which are a much smaller engineering challenge than lofting racks onto space.

Even low grade heat has it's used if the right planning, zoning and incentives can be put in place.

Plus when one of these renters the atmosphere what's happening to all the random element plasma that gets dumped in the upper atmosphere?

[Neil Barnes]

Re: What are they smoking!

random element plasma

Ah, that's the secure data destruction feature, sir!

[midgepad]

Name a satellite deorbited from

Geosynch orbit.

[the Jim bloke]

Re: Name a satellite deorbited from

without even bothering to google anything - geo synch orbit is about 4 times further out than most commercial orbits - and they are called commercial orbits because going further doesnt make commercial sense..

Geo synch has its applications, but just like blockchain, its stupid to use it if you dont need to.

[Anonymous Coward]

out of sight out of mind

and GREEN!!! too, what's not to like? Until it decides to de-orbit rather faster than designed.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Data sovereignty?

I'll bet the lawyers are salivating at the thought of the arguments to come about exactly who has sovereignty of the data in an orbital DC.

[Bitsminer]

Re: Data sovereignty?

The lawyers?

Wintermute LLC

[Dave559]

It's the only way to be sure

"It's the only way to be sure."

This sounds like a completely stupid idea which even Weyland-Yutani might think twice about…

[Vikingforties]

Re: It's the only way to be sure

Wa wait wait, hold on!

That installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it.....

[Richard 12]

No, and yes. In that order.

No, it would result in several orders of magnitude more emissions. At a rough estimate, between 1000 and 100,000 times the emissions of equivalent on-earth servers.

Yes, it is feasible to run servers In Spaaaace, just like it's feasible to fill a swimming pool full of jelly.

It's expensive, wasteful and utterly pointless.

And if you'd like smaller error bars in those figures, let me know where to send the invoice.

[Tom Paine]

Why not?

Because it's a lunatic idea, for at least half a dozen very obvious reasons.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Easier

More efficient designs would be far more effective. Elon Musk has the right idea here, even if his train of thought is 500 rail cars of epically bad solutions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too soon!

I suspect that someone at the EC missed the note to release the details on 1st April.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cosmic rays?

Aren't there more cosmic rays in space? Won't that make bit-flips more common?

I'm sure NASA have this one covered already, but they can do that by using very robust hardware that is also comparatively low spec (they only have to worry about running a probe, not doing big data analysis or whatever, at least not before the signal reaches the ground). A data centre run on Voyager 1 chips is not going to be a great data centre.

[rnturn]

I'd go, but...

> who's going to go up and change that failed drive?

... I'm afraid, not being a former astronaut elected to the Senate, that I'd be deemed too old for the mission.

[Christian Berger]

I'm not sure if they have ever seen a rocket launch

Considering that you need huge rockets filled with propellant that will be turned into CO2 and water in minutes just to send up a shipping container full of equipment, I doubt that this will ever be able to offset the environmental cost of producing electricity on earth.

Also on earth you can just use solar power and wind to power your datacentre.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

Re: I'm not sure if they have ever seen a rocket launch

"Considering that you need huge rockets filled with propellant that will be turned into CO2 and water in minutes"

Not necessarily. Ariane 5 (for example) uses Ammonium Percholate and liquid hydrogen and oxygen. The Ammonium Percholate produces some CO2 and other things but the exhaust is mostly water. Falcon 9 however, uses RP1, which does create CO2.

Even using hydrogen, there's an environmental cost in creating the fuel, as with everything. But building a data centre isn't exactly environmentally clean and concrete is very carbon intensive.

According to the article, the whole point of the study is to compare the environmental costs, which seems a sensible thing to do. If it turns out good or bad then so be out.

I'm more bothered about the implication being that we've messed up this planet so much, and we aren't going to change our ways, so the only option to continue going about our polluting every day lives is to put the stuff in space and start messing that up too, and then claim to be carbon clean.

[Anonymous Coward]

da Vinci genius

Well, "Leonardo" is involved so obviously there is some underappreciated genius going on here ---- Ah! Here it is --- ASCEND will receive a grant of over €2 million ($2.08 million).

[Evil Auditor]

On the plus side: no worries about fires or flooding and neither much about intruders.

[Bartholomew]

Dum dum dum dum dum

Sometimes an idea is just so stupid on every single level, all I hear in my head is this tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm3mDatFpNE

[ThereBePirates]

Solar radiation

Won't anything in orbit need shielding from solar flare radiation?

[Tubz]

You may as well stick it on the moon and then worry about cooling and data speeds, come to think of it, I'm sure Wargaming have done that based on their server's performance.

[Kurgan]

Idiotic in every respect

I just cannot stop thinking how stupid this idea is.

high costs

not repairable

pollution from the rocket

colling issues

radiation issues

bandwidth issues to/from ground

can be targeted by a satellite weapon

Just make efficient computers, power them with solar panels and batteries, and cool them with water from the sea or a river or a lake.