Google just sent chips to space. Literally.
Oct 1st - $SPCX Falcon 9 launched 4 of $GOOGL's most powerful Trillium TPUs into orbit. Project codename: Sundagger.
The test? Can AI chips survive in space?
No air up there = zero convection cooling. Heat pipes dump warmth to the satellite shell, radiation panels blast it into the void as infrared. Result: TPUs run 15min then forced shutdown to cool. Rinse, repeat. Right now they're only handling basic Gemini queries and space data collection.
2027 plan: Launch 2 more sats to test inter-satellite laser links. End goal = dozens to hundreds of satellites laser-meshed together. Distributed space data center unlocked.
Why? Ground-based AI infra is choking on 3 bottlenecks: power, land, water. Plus local communities blocking new builds. Meanwhile AI demand for compute is exploding.
Google's math: if launch costs drop enough, space compute could be cheaper than Earth by mid-2030s.
Escape velocity for data centers isn't optional anymore. It's inevitable.
Oct 1st - $SPCX Falcon 9 launched 4 of $GOOGL's most powerful Trillium TPUs into orbit. Project codename: Sundagger.
The test? Can AI chips survive in space?
No air up there = zero convection cooling. Heat pipes dump warmth to the satellite shell, radiation panels blast it into the void as infrared. Result: TPUs run 15min then forced shutdown to cool. Rinse, repeat. Right now they're only handling basic Gemini queries and space data collection.
2027 plan: Launch 2 more sats to test inter-satellite laser links. End goal = dozens to hundreds of satellites laser-meshed together. Distributed space data center unlocked.
Why? Ground-based AI infra is choking on 3 bottlenecks: power, land, water. Plus local communities blocking new builds. Meanwhile AI demand for compute is exploding.
Google's math: if launch costs drop enough, space compute could be cheaper than Earth by mid-2030s.
Escape velocity for data centers isn't optional anymore. It's inevitable.