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--></style></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'> extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org> <b>On Behalf Of </b>John Clark via extropy-chat<br><b>Subject:</b> [ExI] Even the Sky May Not Be the Limit for A.I. Data Centers<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>…<br><br>>…Even the Sky May Not Be the Limit for A.I. Data Centers<br><br>>…Some tech leaders are concerned that the artificial intelligence race will exhaust available land and energy. The solution might lie in orbit.<br><br><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/technology/space-data-centers-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BFA.JNGs.VWdnG5_iJuZ_&smid=em-share">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/technology/space-data-centers-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BFA.JNGs.VWdnG5_iJuZ_&smid=em-share</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>We tend to imagine away heat control and radiation effects as something that is a low level engineering problem, but we have had microprocessors in space for a long time and neither of these problems have been solved for what we think of as modern processors. If we imagine a high end modern GPU we can estimate a power consumption of about a kW. That’s nearly a square meter of solar cells to power it and we still haven’t gotten to how to extract the heat from that processor. The radiation is a big deal too: It causes SEUs or Single Event Upsets from cosmic rays hitting individual components. This usually necessitates larger components, limiting compute power in space.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>None of that is to say we can’t have data centers in space. But they will likely be far more limited than we currently imagine.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></body></html>