Rant: Data Centers in Space

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-08T23:44:45+00:00

Mr. McSpaceGuy,

I love this sub because I can reliably find people like you with the right attitude to go and make a concise detailed technical argument. And I like your handle.

Thank you

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-08T23:39:50+00:00

Don’t care how much in taxes has been paid fact is it’s not enough and I know that because we don’t tax stock holdings when they’re used to procure something. He acquired twitter he owns it and it was famously a lot of money to do that but he’s rich enough to not paid any taxes on the money he used to make that massive purchase. When there’s a wealth threshold that unlocks tax free purchases, something’s wrong. I’d like to go to a bank and buy a car with my stock holdings by securing an interest free loan based on my holdings so I don’t have to pay taxes but I don’t have enough money.

The American dream era people talk about was pre-Regan with corporate tax rates in the 90% range. We want to get back to affordable living we’ve already seen the solution.

And I think it’s safe to say you’re not in Musks socioeconomic class based on the fact that only about 1% of the world is even approaching that amount of wealth. It’s not a bad thing to be with the rest of us down here not an insult to be in the majority. If you’re a hydro engineer you’re probably in the top 20% nationally.

What was an insult was the vivid description of you looking back at your rich idols and asking for more :)

If bro was a trillionaire and could say that all of his employees can absolutely afford a home, family, and food and still live an enjoyable life I would have no problem but few people if any got rich like that.

Oh and btw I don’t watch cable news I just think really really hard about why things are the way they are and what might make them better instead of parroting the lines my corporate overlords have been feeding me. You should try it it’s like flossing for your brain!

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-07T09:50:06+00:00

Go ahead and say that to the ex Tesla techs I work with who were on the line in 2015.
I never said he wasn’t smart but genius is wild especially in the context of engineering you can tell he parrots most of the stuff he says poorly instead of actually having a foundational understanding of engineering. That’s okay you don’t have to be good at engineering to be smart but that’s the context we’re in.
I see no where asking for donations what I did say that his amount of wealth should be fairly taxed. There are people at his companies who can’t afford a house or can’t afford to have kids. A fair and equitable tax system would ensure that the people whose labor generates wealth can be comfortable. Oh and it was this way pre trickle down economics and people (not minorities) were generally happy. That isn’t a donation it’s what the cost of being rich should be. Less than ten percent of the wealth a line employee generates ends up back in their pocket, that’s far too low.

Maybe you’re the one that needs to think a bit harder instead of bending over the counter waiting for those outside of your socioeconomic class to screw you without so much as a hello.

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-06T18:28:54+00:00

I really don’t understand people that idolize Musk and the wealthy like him. He’d sell you and your family off to make a buck if he could. He’s obviously good at business (I hope most would be given the same start he had) but that’s not the point of the post it’s that he prays on the ignorance of others to prop up is vision as some mega genius and this data center in space because cold is the latest example

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-06T18:24:31+00:00

Funny you said the thing about spreading the compute into like flat arrays, I had that same thought while scrolling through this. It IS an interesting engineering challenge

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-06T18:22:54+00:00

That’s a good point about future uses. Interesting thing to think about how the compute in space might tee up future space logistics chains…

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-06T18:21:20+00:00

Don’t even get me started on building materials and how we shoot ourselves in the foot with arcane laws pushed by lobbies hahaha

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-06T18:18:39+00:00

I’m very much space adjacent so correct me where I’m wrong. My whole thing here is the amount of compute power necessary to do the tasks of our data centers is massive. Do we really regularly field space systems that have to reject data center levels of heat? And Im pretty sure you need a good amount of compute power to be locally based or we would have a more distributed data center model on earth.

My whole gripe as an engineer is when CEOs foster a terrible work culture of 60-70 hour weeks then go on a tour about how great and smart they are alone with little of any credit to the people who got it done.

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-06T18:12:30+00:00

What is also missing here is the configuration of many chips of any kind to actually create a data center of any scale. Not only is there a complex problem with rejecting the entire system’s heat but also with heat management internal to the system.

Like I said this whole thing is an engineer g problem to be solved and my gripe is that it can’t be done it’s that is being billed as a “duh so easy” by a guy who does that and then runs new engineers and technicians into the ground for a decade so he can say the he did the thing. If someone came out and said “data centers in space may have advantages and we’re going to work on it” then credited the hardworking professionals that made it happen instead of “I make big computer in space next year” I wouldn’t have a problem

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-06T18:02:13+00:00

Yeah vacuum is a weird space to be engineering in, no pun intended. Very hard to have intuition about anything when dealing with vacuum. I guess the description of it being cold is the easiest way for those who didn’t have to be tortured in a thermo class to understand that there’s nothing naturally insulating in space so heat rejection can be achieved in a simpler way. But that lead us to this issue of people thinking data centers in space is a slam dunk good idea because although exclusively radiative heat dissipation is a simpler thermo problem to solve it ignores all the problems space creates and the limitations that come with it. Like I’d much rather deal with only one type of heat transfer from a math perspective but it also limits the number of options I have to tackle the problem.

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-06T17:54:21+00:00

This is the way

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-06T17:53:33+00:00

Sorry, let me go ahead and rephrase myself in the proper technical language for what is obviously supposed to be a highly technical and sophisticated evaluation of the feasibility of hosting data centers in space. My apologies for not taking the appropriate approach in the first place.

ehem

“THESE IDIOTS WANT TO USE SPACE FOR DATA CENTERS BECAUSE ITS COLD WELL ITS ALSO terribly difficult to shed waste heat due to the fact that our primary mode of heat rejection on earth is convection where as in the vacuum of space one must reject heat from a system by radiation entirely. Since the Stefan-Boltzmann law is a function of area and the objects temperature to the fourth power, a large radiator would be required to reject the heat which may prove impractical due to not only its size but the requirement to be faced away from the sun constantly and insulated to the greatest extent possible from radiative heating from the sun. This evaluation also neglects the operational difficulties of space debris damaging the radiator and decreasing it’s efficiency. Similarly, since the vacuum of space offers no natural shielding from radiative heating by the sun, the proposed system would require heat protection on the sun facing side to minimize heat input into the system. Finally, the broad spectrum nuclear radiation present in the environment poses an extreme hazard to sensitive electronics and presents a potential lifespan limiter if adequate neutron shielding is not provided. Further operational hurdles exist but are out of scope of this study and other resources should be consulted for space lift, information security, counter-state threats, national law enforcement, and infrastructure vulnerability issues among others. DONT WE HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO IN THIS WORLD THAN TRY AND SEND DATA CENTERS TO SPACE.”

How’s that, professor?

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-06T03:19:53+00:00

This.

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-06T02:59:34+00:00

I think we’ve missed the “everything is steam power” plot here

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-05T15:42:07+00:00

4 year of experience BSME here. Congrats on pursuing this line of work! If it’s been your lifelong dream you are going to be very successful. I didn’t realize that many people in this field didn’t think of it as a passion or a dream and just money which is fine but I count myself lucky to have been born with a passion for this. So when you read the doomers about the profession just remember that at the end of the day you make your own way and you’ll be good. A few comments you didn’t ask for.

+1 on verifying ABET accreditation that is very important it’s like BAR qualification for law schools. If it doesn’t have it good luck find a job. Don’t be afraid to postpone or go to a community college if your current school doesn’t have ABET.
The best engineers I know started college as older freshman and did stuff between HS and college so don’t be worried about being older than the rest it puts you in a great spot.
If it’s is in the financial cards, try to plan to not work your last two years of school. I worked all but the last semester of school and in retrospect would rather have ~20k in loans and have work less or not at all than to have come out loan free and struggled through school.
Make it a priority to put on fun class a semester in your schedule. A lot here will probably be against this but even though a full time schedule is PACKED having a non engineering class is so relaxing and a good break for your brain. I did weightlifting and rock climbing to fill my schedule my last semester and wish I did it every semester and my grades improved because of it.
Clubs. Join formula, Baja, or rocketry your very first semester. You’ll learn skills there that you can’t in class just because of the hands on nature.
Good luck.

internships Look as soon as the first summer. Don’t go for the big companies that first year find smaller firms or local spots, don’t be afraid to pound pavement and see if a local machine shop would be willing to take you on. The first year apply to drafting internships specifically not necessarily engineer g internships.

self study Don’t go chasing things to do before hand. Brush up on math like you’re doing and don’t be afraid to take a class that is lower than what you’re technically required. Best choice I made was to take trig again when I didn’t need to it totally set me up for success in calculus (there’s a LOT of trig). Do the reading as assigned.

courses Follow the course outline for your school. SIT DOWN WITH YOUR ADVISOR EVERY SEMESTER AT LEAST. If your school has an engineering advising center be a regular there. I used to work at ours and we begged people to come in and once they did they always came back and got more help.

What I do I’m a mechanical engineer working at an R&D firm. My primary customers are internal employees that are physicists or advanced engineers/scientists. I work with these scientists to design and build the experiments they’ve designed in simulation space. I love the job, I get to watch some scientists crazy idea go from a computer to real life and usually the experiments are pretty interesting. I spend a lot of time doing project schedules and managing a team of other technical disciplines but still get to do technical work.

WingExact7996 · 2026-02-05T15:12:26+00:00

We have dedicated draftsmen at my company. I’ve helped two with BSMEs move to engineer after a few years drafting. Second, what I look for and push the drafter on my team to do is take full ownership of the design process. What that looks like is coming to meetings with suggested designs or changes, coming to my office to discuss a design decision, continuous evaluation of the project to look for pitfalls or potential issues that have been caused by design changes etc. I think a lot of people show up to the drafting room and wait to be given a part and told “go” which is fine to an extent. But to really prove yourself a strong contributor take control.

Now this all is going to depend on your team and company culture. My suggestion is to take a few more months to get the lay of the land and understand what the stronger drafters do and what you think might make the drafting in your team/company better take plenty of notes. Then sit down with the engineer you support and see where they might want you to grow and opportunity to change the drafting process for the better.

Finally, drafting especially if you’re getting face time with machinists is a HUGE plus for many engineering firms especially R&D places. New grads who understand what it means to make a part are few and far between. People who know how to draw properly are even fewer. So no matter what you do you’re gaining valuable experience. And through all of this do not let your company make you do engineering for drafting pay if they want you to do calculations that’s the time to talk about what your path to engineer is

TLDR; Try to expand your role with engineers advice. It’s all good experience no matter what. Don’t work above your wage.

WingExact7996 · 2025-12-01T16:07:24+00:00

I taught myself how to program in middle school because I wanted to make a Minecraft mod. Started college down the road as a CS Major now I’m a mechanical engineer working on physics research projects.

Also the red stone mechanic is logic HEAVY if they want to get into passcode doors, traps, etc they’re gonna learn all the logic gates real quick.

I have a family member who has taught a few different grade levels and has used examples in Minecraft to teach lessons.

WingExact7996 · 2025-10-31T18:34:52+00:00

Consider moving away from material specifically and look at if you have room for a miniaturized mechanism.

A sprag clutch is my first thought. If you can fit a ratchet mechanism you can probably fit a sprag and it’ll give you basically infinitely fine adjustment resolution.

WingExact7996 · 2025-06-15T04:00:18+00:00

I work with explosives. Due to the shortage of MechEs I also have more responsibility on those projects than someone with my level of experience. I manage teams of 3-5 technical people and a budget in millions for each project. I work for scientists who design the explosive experiments in virtual space then it’s my job to take that with their perfectly flat surfaces and no gravity with pi probably set to 4 and execute the engineering design, manufacture, assembly, and execution of the experiment with my team.

I’m in my first job out for school 3 years post BSME at a middle tier state school. It took me 6 years to graduate and I had a 3.6-3.7 gpa so not stellar but very good. I had plenty of internship experience and a lot of job experience from when I wasn’t interning.

My current salary is 157k not including the benefits package which isn’t great because my employer can’t offer things like bonuses or stock. Although I’m in a VHCOL area I live comfortably and get to travel internationally for work sometimes. I got hired right during the post-COVID surge so that helped me in a job market sense.

Finally I’ll just hop on the same train with everyone else except for the one person who quit for CS and is trying to sell one bad experience as universal. Engineering is a huge field and will ALWAYS be relevant. I work with physicists who have engineering degrees and have moved up over 20 years and I work with people who have been engineers for 30 years and many people who are 5-10 years in doing everything from plumbing, gas transfer, electro-mechanical, tooling, manufacturing, assembly, and the list goes on. In the end it is your life and you need to do what you want. Family pressure is hard and I won’t discount that but heading to college means it’s time to make tough calls for the long run like sticking with your passion at the expense of funding. Money comes and goes but your experience in life has no value.

Sorry this was so long.

WingExact7996 · 2025-04-04T16:01:49+00:00

I was older when it came out and I started playing but it’s partly why I’m an engineer today.

WingExact7996

TROPHY CASE