this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2025
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Jeff Bezos envisions space-based data centers in 10 to 20 years — could allow for natural cooling and more effective solar power (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 5 days ago by Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world to c/hardware@lemmy.world
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[–] melfie@lemy.lol 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Radiation is another challenge for computers in space, so just expecting to stick existing hardware in a space data center won’t work as expected. Massive shielding or more specialized hardware and software will be required like what is described here: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/nasa-to-test-solution-for-radiation-tolerant-computing-in-space/

Existing hardware might work with a lot of mass for shielding, but as others have already mentioned, the rocket equation.

Here’s a highly relevant excerpt:

computers in space are susceptible to ionizing solar and cosmic radiation. Just one high-energy particle can trigger a so-called “single event effect,” causing minor data errors that lead to cascading malfunctions, system crashes, and permanent damage

[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

This effect is already taken into account on a lot of enterprise data systems. Bit flip errors due to radiation are monitored and corrected. Not sure how high the erorr rate could be before the system falls apart though

[–] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Low earth orbit is still inside the magnetic field, and keeps things within decent latency range.

Deep space data centers would be in a bigger radiation environment and also huge latency problems.

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Yeah, true, maybe not as big of a problem in that case.