Skyrocketing AI data-center energy demands drive Google’s radical orbital data center project which aims to tap the sun directly to access “one hundred trillion times more energy than we produce on Earth today.”
Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai recently escalated the AI arms race into orbit by confirming the company will start building experimental data centers in space by 2027. Dubbed Project Suncatcher, the project is Google’s answer to the energy crisis fueled by power-hungry AI models. Pichai says the project aims to tap the sun for “one hundred trillion times more energy than we produce on Earth today”.
The deployment will rely on constellations of specialized satellites packed with Google’s custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) linked by high-speed free-space optical connections.
Initial ground-based testing of the concept has already begun. Google is enlisting satellite company Planet Labs to launch two prototype platforms housing the AI chips in 2027. Pichai asserts that within a decade building extraterrestrial data centers will become commonplace.
Acknowledging SpaceX’s competing plans, he quipped, “Maybe we’ll meet a Tesla Roadster which is going around there too.”
On October 31 Elon Musk posted on X that SpaceX will be a player in this innovation, writing “Simply scaling up Starlink V3 satellites, which have high speed laser links would work.”
Solar-powered AI satellites, he noted with typical Muskian optimism, will be the most cost-efficient way to power AI processing within a five-year timeframe.
Jeff Bezos has predicted that gigawatt-scale orbital data centers will become practical in 10 to 20 years, citing the model’s inherent sustainability. However, he hasn’t made any specific commitment to join the newest Space Race alongside Pichai and Musk due to concerns about upfront and maintenance costs.
Initial launch costs for a one-gigawatt system range between $13 billion and $25 billion.
Engineering challenges include deploying millions of square meters of radiator arrays to cool the custom hardware while establishing reliable, high-speed laser networking between hundreds of orbital platforms, not to mention massive arrays of solar panels to capture vast amounts of solar energy in the first place.
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