Sending data centers into space

Jeff Bezos believes that in order to continue to scale, data centers will eventually need to move to Earth and into space. Speaking at Italian Tech Week in Turin last week, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin said the best way to reduce the environmental impact of these facilities is Move them outside the chart.

Bezos’s concern is shared by many in science and the broader environmental movement. As artificial intelligence grows, scientists worry that Earth’s resources may not be able to keep up. In turn, Bezos prophesy These humans will start building orbital data centers on the Gigawatt scale within the next 10 to 20 years.

“The space will end up being one of the places that makes the land better,” he said.

“It’s already happened with weather satellites. It’s already happened with communications satellites. The next step will be data centers and other types of manufacturing.”

Data centers strain the Earth’s resources

As tech giants pour billions into AI, it goes beyond data center construction. These facilities contain the computing infrastructure needed to train and deploy AI models, and require massive amounts of energy and water to operate.

April report from the International Energy Agency Estimates Global water consumption for data centers is currently about 560 billion liters per year, and could rise to 1,200 billion liters per year by 2030. As for energy, the report found that global electricity consumption from data centers has grown about 12% per year since 2017, reaching 415 Terawatt hours in 2024.

The concept of orbital data centers as a potential solution is not new. Bezos and other tech industry heads have touted the idea as an effective way to support the AI ​​boom without further increasing demand for water and electricity.

Here’s how it will work.

Clicking on unlimited resources in space

In space, there is a lack of solar energy and extremely cold temperatures. The ability to tap into these constantly available resources, in theory, allows us to run massive data centers without the need for water and electricity from the ground.

“These giant training sets,” Bezos said, “will be better built in space, because we have solar power there, 24/7.” “No clouds, no rain, no weather. We will be able to beat the cost of terrestrial data centers in space in the next two decades.”

What’s more, orbital data centers would help reduce air and water pollution on Earth. Traditional data centers emit greenhouse gases and other pollutants that harm the environment and public health, but in space, these emissions would not directly affect our planet. In the past, Bezos has described the idea of ​​moving other industrial work off Earth in order to preserve our planet, including setup Factories in orbit.

Some companies They actually work To make Bexos’ vision a reality. In March, Florida-based Lonestar Data Holdings Announce It has successfully tested a mini-data center the size of a book in space. The “Freedom” data center has put together a ride to the moon aboard the Athena Lunar Lander, which was launched by a Spacex Falcon 9 rocket earlier this year.

However, we still have a long way to go before we can build the massive facilities that Bezos is talking about. This achievement presents many challenges that may take many decades to overcome. But as AI becomes a fixture in our daily lives, coming up with innovative ways to mitigate its Earthly impact will be essential.