Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space

Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space blog.google

Learn about Project Suncatcher, how we’re testing hardware survival for space, designing cooling systems for AI chips, and more.

232 points•xnx•6 days ago•545 comments•

#x2f #suncatcher #space #project #project suncatcher #infrastructure #googles #ml

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/technology/google-suncatc... (https://archive.ph/BGFnP)

545 comments

fwlr6 days ago

Yes, the physics are worse, and yes, the economics are worse, but data centers in space have the crucial advantage that they are out of range of the molotov-throwing arm of Joe Public (recently unemployed).

rzerowan6 days ago

Similarly to Starlink , which was hyped as a low codt alternative for marginalised people/areas and sucked in enormous subsidies to that end. While being more or less a proof of concept for a military command and control network , thats the same way this should be looked at.Especially with data centers being vulnerable on ground, coupled with the ability to reposition the space based units to be 'closer to the action' as it were.

So bottom line a proof of concept for DARPA funds and eventual inegration into the military command and control nodes.

ralfd5 days ago

> and sucked in enormous subsidies to that end.

Starlink didn't get any subsidies. There were reports in summer about them potentially getting 600 Mio (btw the broadband program is 40 billion heavy) and I can't find sources that SpaceX got any program founding yet.

sebzim45006 days ago

Did Starlink really receive enormous subsidies? IIRC it was kicked out of the federal program in the US due to lobbying from others.

DanielHB6 days ago

I dunno, won't a satellite be _more_ vulnerable in space? There is not anti-missile tech in space.

I suppose it is about being out of reach of cheap drones?

KellyCriterion5 days ago

> low codt alternative for marginalised people/areas

Yes, but while I do not see the first, I can clearly see the latter :)

whimsicalism6 days ago

what proportion of use for starlink do you think is military vs rural internet consumers?

thelastgallon6 days ago

Businesses run anywhere real money can be made. Middle east is the most volatile place. Yet, the businesses are perfectly okay building infrastructure to extract, refine and ship oil from there.

If real money can be made, there is no need of datacenters in space. Offer some country some money and they'll let you build whatever you want. The whole idea is entirely unprofitable thats why they are making up things that won't work economically. Keep giving us money indefinitely, we'll keep spending, money can be made after a few decades of spending ... trust us.

throwaway4738256 days ago

Note that you didn't mention any such country, and for good reason - there is none.

You'd need a dictatorship where people's voices don't matter, but then there's no right of ownership either.

user439286 days ago

Your idea is that because AI or data centers are supposedly 'entirely unprofitable', they want to expend even more capital to do it in space with less profit?

And somehow most of the replies seem to be about terrorism. What a comment section.

I'd expect the discussion to be a bit more focused on the scalability and solar power..

ericd6 days ago

The real point is power limitations, putting stuff in space in the right orbit lets you turn solar power into reliable base load.

hdgvhicv6 days ago

Starlink downlink stations aren’t

https://www.reuters.com/world/poland-suspects-fire-starlink-...

rob746 days ago

That was probably more Igor Sleeperagentovich than Joe Public, but yeah...

cedws6 days ago

I'm beginning to wonder if this is actually the motivation, because why the fuck else would you launch computers all the way into space?

bluecalm5 days ago

Access to unlimited almost free energy is the main point. Other than that you don't need to deal with local politics. Other than that it can actually be a faster round trip (if the satellite combines both connectivity to/from Earth and compute) if you don't have a local datacenter.

CamperBob26 days ago

So are container ships in international waters. Put them there.

chii6 days ago

or just a really sturdy fence, and guard posts with guns. That's cheaper than space, and infinitely easier too.

mrheosuper6 days ago

Container ships getting rob by pirates all the times.

So unless those pirates have their own space program, it's pretty safe up there.

neuronexmachina6 days ago

Whenever I hear about this I can't help but be reminded of the Howard Hughes Glomar Explorer, where a hugely-expensive commercial project was actually part of a secret CIA initiative to recover a Soviet submarine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer

I'm not sure that's truly the case here, but it does seem like the tech Project Suncatcher is working on has at least some overlap with requirements for military SIGINT and in-orbit imagery processing.

motionlessveloc6 days ago

Why would the CIA need Google's cover for any of that? The Feds have been flying spy satellites since the 1950s and there's plenty of classified satellite launches.

OkayPhysicist6 days ago

Because anybody near-peer to the US at this point has the capability to shoot down satellites, and anything launched on a classified satellite launch is a prime target.

maxlin6 days ago

While a bit tin foil hat-y, this is an interesting (conspiracy) theory, even while space datacenters aren't as impractical as some people try to make them to be.

senordevnyc6 days ago

Some people, or physics?

lopsotronic4 days ago

Yeah, no proof, of course (these are spies, at the end of the day . . . like with the Epstein stuff any written records have already been shot into the Sun), but that is a very evocative theory. It explains things better than anything else, given how this whole rigamarole seems to run afoul of some very basic math.

There's a case to be made that a substantial part of the mobile/social web revolution of the Aughties was at least in part propelled by the exploding budget of the security state post-9/11. LifeLog, In-Q-Tel, a bucket of other programs that have straight-line-relationships with the various Web 2.0 shenanigans. The CIA point man for these operations are recognizable today as some of the new generation of American semi-governmental oligarchs.

This last year I read that the early Stingrays only worked because they were engineered in from the IMSI standards - it was backdoored at the spec level, not the design level, not the manufacturing level.

When you step back a moment it makes sense. Who's funding a wireless information infrastructure to every American on the continent, not to mention a sea change in mobile computing manufacturing and development. Different tooling, different design systems, different everything, massive scale . . . what, paid for with advertising? Are you saying Mad Men is paying for all this? That seemed and seems . . . unlikely.

nova220336 days ago

Alphabet holds approximately 551 million shares of SpaceX (trading under the ticker SPCX), valued at roughly $94.1 billion, which represents about a 4% to 6% stake in the company.

jcattle6 days ago

Alphabet is also the biggest holder of PlanetLabs at around 10%.

PlanetLabs is the company providing the satellite bus infrastructure to Google for this project.

foota6 days ago

It's a little crazy they haven't tried to sell it off yet. Maybe they don't want to trigger a bank rush or they're limited in their ability to do so?

OtherShrezzing6 days ago

They've got $400bn+ in annual revenues, with $50bn in free cash flow, and the ability to raise enormous piles of debt if they needed it.

They've not got a pressing need for the cash, so can afford to take a multi-decade view of SpaceX. If you look at other investors who take a view across that time horizon, you'll see some pension funds and huge trusts putting money into SpaceX for the same reason.

It's overpriced today on fundamentals, but in 50 years time, today's price will look cheap.

altmanaltman6 days ago

They invested $900 million[1] in 2015, and it is worth $94.1 billion today. Why sell? They also likely have restrictions on selling post-IPO, but I don't think you can trigger a "bank run" on a stock anyway; the price will just keep adjusting as you sell/buy until it gets absurd.

A bank run happens when everyone tries to withdraw all their money at the same time and the bank runs out of cash. Not really possible in the stock market where companies literally can create/destroy shares and there is a whole secondary pricing layer to it.

1. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/alphabets-spacex-be...

sterlind6 days ago

why would they sell? because of ridiculously large the valuation is? like, I guess at SpaceX's valuation there's tremendous downside and little upside (x2 growth is unlikely when it's a third of the tech sector)

kin6 days ago

For those questioning viability, there's a startup called Starcloud https://www.starcloud.com/ with a public whitepaper explaining a bit their hardware and economics https://www.starcloud.com/wp. They've already had one small proof of concept launched. Not trying to promote, I just heard about them on the ycomb podcast

stingrae6 days ago

“A 5 GW data center would require a solar array with dimensions of approximately 4 km by 4 km”

I think dodging debris is challenging at that scale.

Also this is the solar cells not the radiators

hdgvhicv6 days ago

Desert land is full of that amount of area available for peanuts.

That’s 4000 acres. I see a 6000 acre ranch available in Arizona for $7m. The cost of building a 5GW DC is about 100 billion. Land including enough for all the solar and battery you need to be completely self sufficient is basically free.

FuckButtons6 days ago

Presumably that’s not a single satellite.

flog6 days ago

I wonder if the shadows from such a large area would have a climate cooling effect?

a11r6 days ago

That whitepaper puts the cost of a 40 MW cluster at $167m on land and $8.2m in space, inclusive of launch costs.

wmf6 days ago

They seem to not be counting the $1B of GPUs on either side, making the difference pretty small. They also think launching 200 racks of equipment into space will cost $5M.

j2kun6 days ago

that sounds ridiculous. How could it be so much cheaper

alienthrowaway6 days ago

how much area do you need to radiate away 40 MW, assuming you want to keep your GPUs at a toasty 90 celcius. Every space datacenter fan/promoter enthuses about the free solar power, but forget to mention how the heat will be dissipated.

seanhunter6 days ago

Historically there have been many startups with pitches that haven’t worked out. The existence of a startup who think they can tackle a particular problem isn’t evidence of the viability of their proposed solution. If they succeeded, that would be evidence.

notahacker6 days ago

Yeah. Starcloud is notable for two things: firstly that they've raised a lot of money and secondly that theyve already abandoned the nonsense in their white paper and shifted to a "lots of satellites" model like everyone else exploring orbital datacentres...

Good4boothee6 days ago

I think SpinLaunch is great example. They were actually able to fund and make a working prototype, tested it, but still decided it is not practical after all, before pivoting to production of knockoff Starlink-like satellites.

rhplus6 days ago

What happens to all the precious metals that go up with these data centers? At least with a land based data center we have a vague hope of recycling the raw materials at some point in the future.

nilamo6 days ago

Just like with all the satellites, the recycling plan is to allow them to burn in atmosphere. Maybe after we breathe enough of it, we can recover the metals via crematories.

madamelic6 days ago

Precious metals stop being precious metals once asteroid mining begins. I don't think it will be super soon but I could certainly foresee it being a thing within 10 - 15 years which is about 2 - 3 generations of satellites from my very brief Google.

bahmboo6 days ago

Starcloud seems like a whole lot of hand waving and BS. This is a good video that goes over their problems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qpdUNMt2yg

Mountain_Skies6 days ago

It reminds me of the Hyperloop white paper, whose existence for many was proof enough that it was viable and beyond questioning.

hahajk6 days ago

At least this brochure marks cooling in the "challenges" column rather than the advantages.

However, the only advantage listed in this announcement is "near-constant sunlight". It appears they are hoping for 8x solar efficiency for 1000x the cost of terrestrial construction.

If the actual motivation is that people don't want data centers on earth, that seems to be because the datacenters 1) drive up energy costs, 2) use a lot of water I guess, and 3) can make noise. If you're able to operate a datacenter satellite you apparently don't need local electricity, water, or human labor. As someone else said, set up on the desert or in the middle of Alaska somewhere 100s of miles from the nearest person. They can still use solar (just build like 8x the panels if you need to... still cheaper than space), they don't need water, don't need labor... I think most public opposition would disappear.

I've heard some say the real advantage is latency for spy satellites... This seems not a real use case. The kind of workloads that require this kind of datacenter usually can spare 1-2 seconds in round trip time. Millisecond-sensative reactions I would assume would want to be driven by onboard processing.

One true advantage that I haven't seen on any brochure is that the heat produced by the space datacenters could be released into space rather than raise the temperature of the earth. However, the satellite would have to be designed to radiate the heat away from earth. Hopefully they design the satellites to direct the radiated heat away from earth and don't just point the radiators straight back to earth...

user439286 days ago

> 1) drive up energy costs, 2) use a lot of water I guess, and 3) can make noise

I don't think the opposition to data center projects can be explained with actual impact, which so far seems entirely negligible, and lower than heavy industry.

I had the impression it's more driven by general mistrust in public officials and the tech industry.

freedomben5 days ago

This is the impression I get as well. Plus, people concerned that property values will be negatively affected, that their taxes may go up to subsidize the data center, etc

spencerflem5 days ago

I wouldn’t call the electricity use negligible, some of the newer data centers are looking at the same energy usage as small countries and run off fossil fuel

egorfine5 days ago

> most public opposition would disappear

No. Ideology is never bothered by facts and never leaves anything alone.

pastel87394 days ago

> set up on the desert or in the middle of Alaska somewhere 100s of miles from the nearest person… I think most public opposition would disappear

I don’t know about the desert, but in Alaska I think this would be hard to achieve. People there tend to care about preserving wilderness, and most of them would probably be opposed to this.

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