Will Your Next Data Center be Out of this World?

Many different areas of engineering come together in a data center.  Thermal, mechanical, electrical, and fiber-optic engineering are a few of the specialties that blend together for successful IT infrastructure.  But we’ve never really considered aeronautical engineering to be part of the data center skill set.  Maybe we should be more open to it.

Lumen Orbit recently renamed themselves Starcloud and the startup has raised 8-figures to fuel its efforts to place webscale data centers in outer space.  The company has a test mission scheduled for this summer. 

It sounds way out there (pardon the pun) but the more you think about it the more plausible it becomes.  Solar energy becomes more workable up there, as nighttime and cloud cover are nearly insurmountable obstacles to having primarily solar-powered data centers here on the ground.  Plus there are no neighbors to complain about the new construction as they are in Northern Virginia. 

When data centers powered by manure were floated (sorry) as a concept in the early days of Direct LTx we took note, as there is a dairy farm across the street from our colocation data center.   Alas, that blend of agriculture and technology never game to fruition, much to our chagrin.   But this space concept might work.

Will your data center someday be in lower earth orbit?  It’s possible, we guess, but for now our focus will remain on the Direct LTx data center here in the lower earth non-orbit of Eastern Pennsylvania.  

And speaking of aeronautical engineering, the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum’s 34th Annual World War II Gathering of Warbirds takes place the weekend of June 6th through 8th here in Reading.  It’s a great take if you have an interest in experiencing World War II aviation close up, as well as the music, fashion, and culture of 1940’s America.  Hope to see you there for the living history and family fun.