John Abraham, a professor in the University of St. Thomas College of Engineering, spoke with WCCO Radio about Google’s plans to test AI computing infrastructure in space. Abraham discussed whether moving data centers beyond Earth could alleviate concerns about their environmental and resource demands, or whether broader concerns surrounding artificial intelligence go beyond the physical infrastructure.
From the conversation:
Alix Kendall: OK, so you mentioned there are some upsides and downsides. Let’s hear what some of them are.
John Abraham: Well, you were great in that lead-in. You mentioned some of the upsides. It’s harder to be against data centers when they’re not in your backyard. They’re not taking up the water that your town needs or the energy that your town needs. Think about solar panels. I’ve got solar panels at my house, and they get about 25% of the energy that comes from the sun. But if you’re in space, you can point those solar panels at the sun 24 hours a day. You get a lot more power. So solar power is much more efficient in space.
Now you’ve got to get the things up there. I get it. You have to pay for the launch fuel and the launch vehicle and all that. But once you get them up there, solar power is pretty darn easy to get. One of the issues that they’re going to deal with is can you get these chips to survive the rigors of a launch? There’s a lot of acceleration and vibration that happens, and that’s one of the things that they’re going to be testing.
The other thing they have to test is can you get rid of the heat? These computers and data centers generate a lot of heat, and you don’t have air, and you don’t have other places to dump the heat in space. So that’s going to be a real challenge. But they’re not taking up space. They’ve got plenty of solar power. So those are some of the benefits, and we’re going to see if they outweigh the cons.
