BREAKING: Google just proved AI data centers in space actually work Project Suncatcher's first satellite, built with Planet and launched on a SpaceX rocket with 4 TPUs on board, verified the physics: Google sent a prompt from Earth, a TPU in orbit ran Gemma inference, and the full answer... was beamed back down. SpaceX is launching its StarMind satellites with NVIDIA GPUs on Starship in late 2027. Kardashev Type II civilization INCOMINGshow more

Google CEO:

@planet hard to believe we are one step closer to this

@planet Nobody questions if you CAN do it, the real question is how profitable it will be. Hard to imagine anyone other than SpaceX doing it profitably in the near future

@planet Where are all the haters saying it can't be done?

@planet LFG. We need 100,000x more compute than we have now.

@planet But I was reliably informed by angry Redditors that this was impossible to do, or was that only for Elon? 🤔

@planet @LedoyStaggs

@planet wait so the prompt went up and the answer came back down? that round trip is wild

@planet The question isn’t whether they will work, it’s whether they’re economically feasible - they’re not.

@elonmusk @planet So… are we back on Monday? Or still going to zero? 🤣

@planet inference in orbit was the easy physics. heat is the hard part: in vacuum you can only radiate it away. σT⁴ at 300 K ≈ 460 W/m² per side, so every 1 kW of chips wants ~1 m² of two-sided radiator facing dark sky (before sunlight and earthshine).

@planet Elon is so incredible powerful with his vertical integration

@planet Kardashev Type II civilization. First deliverable: a haiku.

@planet Nobody said it won't work: people are asking are they cheaper than running them on earth ...

@planet Do you think musk would be running smack about it if he hadn't already snuck one into orbit . . .

@planet All this proved is TPU's can handle the launch forces in this configuration. Data centers in space will need to solve a myriad of technical challenges at low cost in order to 'work'. I'm sure they'll get there, but this launch didn't prove much.

@elonmusk @planet Was there any doubt that it wouldn’t?

@planet But @sama said it was all a scam. I don’t know what to think anymore. My whole world is over.

@planet lets get to type 1 first shall we lol

@planet Curious how theyre cooling the thing down.

@planet inference on a TPU in orbit is wild. now the fun part is dumping all that heat with no air

@planet Test: check Now: move on 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

@elonmusk @planet The most dangerous move in Ai to date

@planet 🚀 so we’ll argue about NIMBYism on earth for another 12 months

@planet Google paying SpaceX to rent their rocket is cool business

@planet Proved it actually worked? Oh so I guess Starlink satellites weren’t proof already. Lmao, we already knew it was possible. The question is how does something larger get into space and figure out how to interconnect them at the same speed as nvlink.

@planet Weird, all the EDS fueled "science" YouTubers were wrong?!?! Shocker

@planet 👏🏻

@planet Per Google's post today, Gemma 4 ran on the onboard TPUs and sent back a haiku over Svalbard. Honestly a great first test. Thermal and radiation runs come next, then two linked satellites in 2027.

@planet Excelente 👍

@planet no this isn’t anything special

@elonmusk @planet great news

@planet How long it take?