Companies pursue space-based data centers to cut energy and cooling loads

Time reports that a growing group of companies — including Blue Origin, Google, Open AI and several startups — are exploring moving data centers into space to address the sector’s mounting energy and cooling demands. On Earth, data centers already consume large shares of power and water: the Pew Research Center says U.S.

data centers use more than 4% of annual energy, a figure expected to grow by more than 130% by the end of the decade, and a large campus can emit up to 100 megawatts of waste heat, enough to power 100,000 homes. The number of data centers rose from about 8,000 in 2021 to roughly 12,000 in the past five years, with the U.S.

leading at 5,426 locations, the World Economic Forum reports. Cooling relies heavily on water (the largest centers use about five million gallons per day), and the Environmental Energy and Study Institute says up to 56% of the energy used by data centers comes from fossil fuels; global data creation is projected to exceed 400 zettabytes by 2028.

Key Topics

Tech, Blue Origin, Google, Spacex, Starcloud, Aetherflux