409K views · Dec 21, 2025 · 28:11 · 2 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2026
Scott Manley examines why SpaceX, Google and others are looking at orbital data centers. He walks through the economics, heat rejection and solar power arguments, with links to the Lumen/Starcloud and Google Suncatcher papers.
Why Hacker News points people here: Pointed to as a credible, engineering-informed answer to whether space data centers are feasible, from someone with deep space knowledge.
“Scott Manley had a really good video on it”HN comment, 2026
“he does know a lot about space engineering and science”
Manley's feasibility breakdown of orbital data centers; heat is manageable.
Which is apparently manageable. Scott Manley isn’t an industry veteran, but he does know a lot about space engineering and science. Here’s his breakdown of the feasibility, and heat management is not really a major issue: this video
“Scott Manley had a really good video on it”
Video confirming orbital data centers are not far-fetched.
Scott Manley had a really good video on it that more or less confirmed my "bar napkin approximations" when people first started talking about this stuff. I think it's this one? this video Anyway, I think sun synchronous orbit (basically slightly off from polar) and pointing the solar panels toward the sun and the radiator away... It's not as far fetched as people would have you believe.
Cited for satellites' solar and radiator heat balance.
Also not a brain surgeon, but to my understanding, modern satellites already have solar panels and radiators that account for the system's overall energy absorption and dissipation in low Earth orbit [1]. Therefore, plugging a supercomputer into the solar array instead of another instrument would likely not affect the overall heat profile meaningfully. Most energy in LEO is ultimately derived from solar irradiance and passes through the spacecraft regardless of internal usage. That said, take this with a grain of salt due to the aforementioned lack of astrochirurgical bona fides. [1] this video
