Experts Warn Space Data Centers Could Be Catastrophic for Planet

Silicon Valley's latest blue-sky idea—sticking massive data centers in orbit—is running into a hard stop from environmental groups and former US space officials. A new petition urges the FCC to halt licensing for orbital data centers pitched by SpaceX, Blue Origin, and others, warning the projects could dump huge amounts of soot, metals, and other pollutants into the upper atmosphere, with potentially catastrophic effects on climate and the ozone layer, the Guardian reports. Plans to put millions more satellites in orbit would also "fundamentally transform the night sky," with devastating consequences for wildlife and astronomy, the petition warns.

Launched by groups including Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Earthjustice, and DarkSky International, the filing argues the plans violate federal law by skipping required environmental review. Critics say the millions of added satellites would worsen light pollution, strain supplies of rare metals, and inject largely unstudied contaminants into a sensitive part of the stratosphere—all while companies provide almost no detail on how they'd limit the damage.

• The companies proposing orbital data centers "describe their plans in grandiose, civilization-changing terms," the 28-page petition states. "But these same proponents have refused to embrace any inquiry into the impacts of their self-claimed epochal technology on the environment, science, economy, or other values."

Multiple former federal space officials told the Guardian that they doubt whether the proposed mega-constellations of data centers are even feasible. In a look at the technical problems involved in SpaceX proposal, Eric Berger at Ars Technica concludes that there are no "fundamental barriers" to the plan, but there are some big problems to solve, along with costs that could run higher than $7 trillion. "You need unprecedented heavy lift: reusable and rapid launch. You need the ability to manufacture the largest satellites humans have ever built and to build 100 times more of them than humans ever have for a single constellation. You have to hope that radiation's impacts on chips are manageable and that radiational cooling scales," he writes. "You also need a few trillion bucks."