Subscribe to IEEE Spectrum Magazine and get 20% off: https://spectrum.ieee.org/realengineeringsummer Read IEEE Spectrum's article on orbital data centers by Andrew Cavalier: https://spectrum.ieee.org/orbital-data-centers-heat Watch this video ad free on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/realengineering-the-truth-about-space-data-centers/ Links to everything I do: https://beacons.ai/brianmcmanus Get your Real Engineering shirts at: https://standard.tv/collections/real-engineering Credits: Producer/Writer/Narrator: Brian McManus Writers: Malik Klalib Head of Production: Mike Ridolfi Editor: Dylan Hennessy Writer/Research: Josi Gold Animator: Ratimir Rakuljic Sound and Production Coordinator: Graham Haerther Sound: Donovan Bullen Thumbnail: Simon Buckmaster Head of Moral: Shia LeWoof Model Credits: "Starlink Spacex Satellite" (https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/starlink-spacex-satellite-0a60f6720c5141c9a1c6d71aac108b31) by Malacodart (https://sketchfab.com/malacodart) licensed under CC-BY-4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images Thank you to AP Archive for access to their archival footage. Music by Epidemic Sound: http://epidemicsound.com/creator Thank you to my patreon supporters: Abdullah Alotaibi, Adam Flohr, Henning Basma, Hank Green, William Leu, Tristan Edwards, Ian Dundore, John & Becki Johnston. Nevin Spoljaric, Jason Clark, Thomas Barth, Johnny MacDonald, Stephen Foland, Alfred Holzheu, Abdulrahman Abdulaziz Binghaith, Brent Higgins, Dexter Appleberry, Alex Pavek, Marko Hirsch, Mikkel Johansen, Hibiyi Mori. Viktor Józsa, Ron Hochsprung
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Thank you for not turning this channel into a private equity owned, AI-powered slop content factory.
corporations in 2003: "you can't pirate our stuff with your potatoes! straight to jail!" corporations in 2026: "we need to turn the entire solar system into a plagiarism machine"
This white paper sounds like what my students turn in when they don't think I'm reading their homework
Don’t be too hard on Claude. It worked very hard for several seconds on that business plan.
Woops didn’t mean to have the comments turned off 😂
dream sponsor
I might have to get that IEEE Magazine subscription. The men yearn for beautiful, intentional STEM print media
Thank you for being willing to call out slop. Particularly using engineering and logic, not insults or rage baits
I used your discount code to get an IEEE subscription about 8 months ago and I have thoroughly enjoyed the publication. Highly recommend to any other STEM nerds out there.
Perfect example of big tech scamming everyone for funding. Great video.
A video looking at the viability of SpaceX’s proposed AI satellites would have been more worthwhile than dunking on a delusional startup.
Name a more common pairing than "Elon Musk" and "adding a few orders of magnitude and still calling it feasible".
7:59 "...being gassed up by an overly agreeable AI..." Too true!
until asteroid mining and space manufacturing happens it is not feasible nor economical to build large structures in space
These people have never actually seen a server room for real
18:30 doesn't this all but guarantee that the first strike in a war will be an artificially created Kessler syndrome?
Advertisement from 2046: "Has an orbital data center fallen on you or your loved ones? If so you may be entitled to compensation from a class action lawsuit, but only if you call now!"
I am reminded of the way that extremely smart managers and engineers from companies like Arianespace and ULA repeatedly explained that reusability was completely uneconomical, and that SpaceX was wasting their time and would eventually fail both in trying to get reusability to work and as a business enterprise.
18:00 "Autonomous warfare powered by satellite intelligence IS the future of warfare." Then blowing sh*t up in space is the future of warfare, and Kessler syndrome is the future of space around earth.
Multiple square kilometers of solar panels and radiators seem like easier targets than spy satelites and ICBMs. Due to the sheer size of these satellites would they be easy to target, and would it be feasible to do something like overwhelm the cooling capacity of the satellite and possibly damage/destroy it with a ground based laser array of sorts?