Constellations - Explore Space Network Technologies with Industry Leaders
Oct 14, 2026 · 22 min · 13 segments
Live from the show floor of SmallSat, Al Tadros of Redwire explores why orbital data centers are quickly becoming a realistic and exciting architectural possibility. He explores how advances in AI…
Al TadrosGuest
John GilroyHost
Al, the concept of orbital data centers has moved from science fiction to serious engineering discussion.
They're having, you know, agents, uh, they, uh, converse with and, uh, have them help make decisions in their daily lives.
Uh, there's a tremendous amount of discussions about, uh, data centers, building out of data centers, and of course there's a lot of controversy whether they, uh, increase cost of, you know, utilities, water usage, blight, not, you know, not in my backyard.
So, um, you know, the, the, the, it's, it's been an approach from outside the space industry looking in as, "Hey, is this a, a credible approach to putting data centers outside of our area using resources from outside the Earth?" You know, heating air from out or heating areas that are outside.
So there's been a logical, "Hey, does this solve some of the problems that we're seeing here?" And quite frankly, there, there's no physics that says we can't.
There's a lot of engineering, there's a lot of hard problems, but that's what we do in space industry.
So that's where it's happened over the last couple of years, and quite, quite frankly, it's been pretty exciting because, uh, uh, there is a lot of history that says we can do quite a bit with, uh, data centers in space.
Al Tadros, T-A-D-R-O-S, very well known in the industry, write articles and appear on podcasts as well.
In a recent paper, uh, I think you focused on power and thermal management rather than processors or AI.
Al, the concept of orbital data centers has moved from science fiction to serious engineering discussion.
They're having, you know, agents, uh, they, uh, converse with and, uh, have them help make decisions in their daily lives.
Uh, there's a tremendous amount of discussions about, uh, data centers, building out of data centers, and of course there's a lot of controversy whether they, uh, increase cost of, you know, utilities, water usage, blight, not, you know, not in my backyard.
So, um, you know, the, the, the, it's, it's been an approach from outside the space industry looking in as, "Hey, is this a, a credible approach to putting data centers outside of our area using resources from outside the Earth?" You know, heating air from out or heating areas that are outside.
So there's been a logical, "Hey, does this solve some of the problems that we're seeing here?" And quite frankly, there, there's no physics that says we can't.
There's a lot of engineering, there's a lot of hard problems, but that's what we do in space industry.
So that's where it's happened over the last couple of years, and quite, quite frankly, it's been pretty exciting because, uh, uh, there is a lot of history that says we can do quite a bit with, uh, data centers in space.
Al Tadros, T-A-D-R-O-S, very well known in the industry, write articles and appear on podcasts as well.
In a recent paper, uh, I think you focused on power and thermal management rather than processors or AI.
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