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Project Suncatcher

Data centers in space

Section 1

The Energy Ceiling

AI demand is exploding, but Earth's grid is capped. We aren't just limited by chips anymore; we are running out of power.

"The Sun emits 100 trillion times humanity's total electricity production."

In space, there is no night, no clouds, and no atmosphere to dim the light. Solar panels receive 8x more energy annually than on Earth.

Section 2

The Constellation

Building a massive "Death Star" station is too risky. Instead, Google proposes a swarm architecture.

  • hub 81 Satellites flying in tight formation (1km radius).
  • bolt Connected by free-space optical lasers for massive bandwidth.

They act as one giant virtual computer, solving the heat and redundancy problems of monolithic designs.

Section 3

"Radiation is Overrated"

Conventional wisdom says you need expensive "space-hardened" chips. Google proved otherwise.

Test Result: TPU v6e

Survived 5-year equivalent radiation dose with 0 permanent failures.

We can use standard, off-the-shelf AI hardware. This crashes the cost barrier.

Section 4

The $200/kg Tipping Point

The economics are flipping. As launch costs plummet via Space/Starship, we approach a critical crossover.

Target: Mid-2030s

If launch costs hit $200/kg, launching a server becomes cheaper than paying for its 5-year electricity bill on Earth.

Section 5

Data Sovereignty

A data center that orbits every country but belongs to none. It's the ultimate offshore jurisdiction.

"The country that dominates the orbit, dominates the compute."
Credits

Source Documentation

This visualization is built upon the engineering research and system architecture proposed by Google.

Read the Research Paper

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