Are Google and SpaceX plotting space-based data centres?

Google is reportedly in talks with Elon Musk's SpaceX over a rocket-launch deal to place data centres into orbit, according to Wall Street Journal reports earlier this week.

The appeal of space-based infrastructure is straightforward and easily understandable. Every time someone uses ChatGPT, streams a film, or searches the web, the response comes from a data centre - vast, energy-hungry warehouses of computers that consume enormous amounts of electricity and water.

Now, the world suddenly needs a lot more of them because of the AI boom and space offers a compelling alternative of uninterrupted solar power and no land use.

Musk has repeatedly said that the future of AI is in space, even mentioning it at the Davos summit earlier this year.

"Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions," Musk wrote on SpaceX's website.

"In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale. To harness even a millionth of our Sun’s energy would require over a million times more energy than our civilization currently uses!"

Alphabet's Google is pushing the space-based data centre idea, and plans to launch prototype satellites by 2027.

Titled Project Suncatcher, Google Research wrote in a blog post last year that the proposed system would deploy a network of satellites in a coordinated constellation, most likely in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous low Earth orbit - a path that keeps them bathed in nearly continuous sunlight.

It noted, however, that bringing such a system to life would require clearing several significant technical obstacles. 

To put anything into space, you need to launch it on a rocket.

SpaceX launches still cost tens of millions of US dollars per mission, and analysts said that orbital data centres would likely need launch costs to fall to well below $1,000 per kilogram to make economic sense.

While, everyone talks about unlimited solar power in space, space is also a vacuum. On Earth, when computers heat up, air can carry that heat away. But in space, there is no air so systems would have to radiate heat much more carefully. 

Secondly, what happens when something breaks? A repair crew won't be readily available. A completely different engineering standard would be required to ensure that the centres run smoothly and autonomously for years.

Thirdly, independent researchers warn that low Earth orbit is becoming crowded, with some regions already approaching dangerous levels of congestion and the risk of collisions on the rise. 

So AI may be heading into space in the long run, sooner rather than later if Musk has his way, but there are still major hurdles to clear.