alt Hacker Newshow is power easier? solar power in orbit seems like a no-brainer - no losses due to the atmosphere / weather, and with the right orbit you can get sun all the time. Was the ocean DC tide-powered or something? how does that compare?
Replies
In space, you have to deploy all the power production you want to consume in the same package that's consuming that power.
On earth, you can build a power plant miles from the DC. And you can use all sorts of different sources of power, tidal, wind, nuclear, solar, fossil fuels. All options. And like the DC, if there's a problem with any of those sources, you can go fix it or replace it with different power sources. If there's a problem with the solar panels in space, your DC is dead.
That's both easier and a lot more flexible.
In Microsoft’s case, they ran a cable, which is much simpler to do than putting solar panels in orbit.
It looks like ISS can generate 240KW peak from 2500m2 of solar panels, and runs at half of that nominally [0].
A single B200 can consume up to 1200W. A single GB300 system needs 14.5kW. So, you can only have ~15 (incl. satellite's energy needs) GB300 with ISS' solar panels, which is absurd. See [1] for the size of the panels we're talking about.
People dream about Starlink-style close flying systems to aggregate them to a single data center. With these power requirements, it's more like an AI hallucination. If we can build way more efficient chips or run smaller models on modest hardware, etc. We may go there, but needing ISS sized solar panels to run frontier models in space?
Also, don't forget the radiators. You also need those to pump that heat out of these systems.
The outlook doesn't look good at this point.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panels_on_spacecraft#Spa...
[1]: https://www.sgmk.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/iss.png