About the Orbital Solar + Space Data Center Planner

Putting solar power and data centers in orbit sidesteps night, weather, and land — but adds launch mass and thermal challenges. This planner sizes an orbital solar-plus-compute installation: power collected, compute supported, mass, and the flights to build it.

It's for reasoning about space-based solar power and orbital compute as one integrated facility.

How to use it

1. Set target power and compute load.
2. Configure array and platform mass assumptions.
3. Run the planner to read collected power, supported compute, and mass.
4. See the Starship flights and rough cost to deploy.

How it works

Orbital arrays enjoy near-continuous sunlight, so collected power per unit area is high, but thermal rejection and mass constrain how much compute you can run. The planner balances generation against the load and converts the hardware into a flight manifest.

It shows the appeal and the catch of orbital compute: abundant power and no night, paid for with launch mass and heat rejection — the trade that cheaper launch keeps shifting toward feasibility.

Worked example

Sizing an orbital data center to a target compute load reveals both the generous solar it can collect and the dozens of flights its mass implies — quantifying why orbital compute waits on cheaper heavy lift.

Frequently asked questions

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