Jeff Bezos has stepped up his rivalry with Elon Musk after the Amazon founder’s spacetech, Blue Origin, filed an application to launch a constellation of up to 51,600 satellites to create orbiting data centres.

The petition, lodged with the US Federal Communications Commission yesterday (19th March), argues that Blue Origin should be given the green light to launch Project Sunrise due to the “insatiable demand” for AI and cloud computing, growth which the firm says is facing a roadblock as Earth-bound data centres reach their limits.

“Space-based data centres will be a complement to terrestrial infrastructure by introducing a new compute tier that operates independently of Earth-based constraints,” reads the filing, published online by The Register.

“By adding compute capacity to orbit, the constellation will expand total industry capacity and introduce new sources of clean power for compute workloads while preserving terrestrial infrastructure for uses that cannot be replicated in space.”    

Space is widely considered the next frontier for data centres, with concerns mounting across the tech sector that future advances in AI and other emerging technologies will be limited by inadequate infrastructure on the ground.

Data centres are already sparking controversy over land use, energy and water demands, while delays in connecting to the grid are seeing projects facing huge delays, with Google reporting wait times for connection surging to more than a decade in some areas of the US.

According to Blue Origin, space-based compute could break this bottleneck, with data centre satellites unconstrained by a patchwork of grid connections or any need for physical footprints, with the endless, empty vacuum of space for cooling, and powered by boundless solar energy.

The spacetech contends that this would not only lower the costs for running data centres compared to terrestrial alternatives, but would accelerate breakthroughs and allow “US companies developing and using AI to flourish”. 

However, Blue Origin’s plans are diminutive in comparison to SpaceX’s application to launch one million satellites to power the next phase of AI, with Musk among the most vocal advocates for space-based data centres, having previously said that “space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale”.

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Although Musk and other leading technologists might take it for granted that data centres will soon be placed among the stars, critics argue that getting these facilities up-in-the-air and running is still closer to sci-fi than hard science.

Research centre, the Breakthrough Institute, for example, has said that orbital data centres won’t have the protection of Earth’s atmosphere from waves of radiation, which could cause permanent damage or “bit flips” in sensitive AI chips, turning zeros into ones – potentially causing huge errors.

There are also unresolved issues surrounding data transmission, how to protect data centres from collisions with other satellites and space debris, not to mention the huge costs of launch, with one space engineer estimating $42.4 billion to put a single data centre in orbit – three times the costs of a terrestrial alternative.

Image Credit – Blue Origin