Starcloud wants to mine Bitcoin in space, if it can figure out how to cool the hardware

[midian182]

Why it matters: Bitcoin miners have spent years chasing cheap electricity around the planet, but will leaving our atmosphere reap better results? Nvidia-backed Starcloud wants to take cryptomining into orbit, putting dedicated mining hardware aboard its second spacecraft. The startup believes abundant solar power could make space an attractive home for an industry notorious for its energy consumption.

CEO Philip Johnston says Starcloud will be the first company to mine Bitcoin in space, with ASICs riding aboard Starcloud-2 when it's expected to launch in early 2027.

In an interview shared by Johnston earlier this year, he estimates that a B200 GPU drawing one kilowatt costs around $30,000, compared with roughly $1,000 for an ASIC consuming the same power. That's a comparison of hardware cost per kilowatt, rather than a claim of 30 times better mining efficiency.

Starcloud's main ambition is to build data centers in space. Its earlier mission sent an Nvidia H100 into orbit aboard a satellite roughly the size of a small refrigerator. The approximately 60-kilogram Starcloud-1 launched in November 2025 as an early test of that concept.

Starcloud-2 is designed to expand that into a commercial service, combining a GPU cluster, persistent storage, continuous access, and dedicated thermal and power systems. Its sun-synchronous orbit supports the company's solar-powered plans. Google is pursuing a similar idea through Project Suncatcher, using TPUs and optical links between satellites.

Cooling, however, remains an engineering challenge. Space offers a cold background, but a vacuum provides no air to carry heat away through convection. The spacecraft must transfer heat from its electronics to radiators that emit infrared radiation. Radiator area, operating temperature, and surface properties all affect how much heat can escape.

Johnston also acknowledges that ASICs can become outdated faster than GPUs, giving the mining hardware less time to pay for itself. Meanwhile, miners on Earth can already use sources such as flare gas to generate electricity for around two to three cents per kilowatt-hour, he says.

Cheap chips and plentiful sunlight make space-based cryptomining an interesting pitch. Whether it can compete with mining on Earth will depend on how much it costs to launch and cool the hardware, and how long those ASICs remain profitable.

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Starcloud wants to mine Bitcoin in space, if it can figure out how to cool the hardware

 

[Kirby1]

So stupid. Definitely an investment scam. As if launching a mining rig into space and setting up an elaborate cooling system that overcomes the lack of any medium to exchange heat towards would be cheaper than doing it on earth.

In space, electricity is "free" because it has to be solar. But guess what guys, solar works on earth and solar plus batteries is definitely cheaper than launching into space, and they'd still need batteries in space unless they launched into a special orbit, which would be much more expensive to do.

 

[NumberNine]

Sure, why not launch more junk into orbit?

Better than having them soak up more public infrastructure.

 

[GeoffreyA]

A joke really, trying to expend much effort and energy for monopoly money, instead of directing it towards mining of minerals in space, for instance.

 

[yRaz]

A joke really, trying to expend much effort and energy for monopoly money, instead of directing it towards mining of minerals in space, for instance.

All money is monopoly money. Fiat currency is inherently worthless and it only has value because people believe it has value. This is where most of US inflation is coming from, people stopped believing in the dillar and since we fired all the military advisors that would tell people no, we have a whole bunch of yes men who can't win. The Dollar was backed by the might of the US military. We fired all the people who knew how to use the military and the world took notice.

 

[Eflow]

Option 1: create a solar array and mining center practically anywhere on earth. It can be easily maintained and updated by Joe Schmo

Option 2: launch tens of thousands of pounds into low-earth orbit, develop a complicated cooling system that somehow does better than simple thermal radiation, and lock yourself into ASICs that can't be upgraded. The entire package is unmanned and can't be easily repaired if something breaks.

People who like profit go with option #1. People who like grifting money from investors go with option #2.

 

[GeoffreyA]

All money is monopoly money. Fiat currency is inherently worthless and it only has value because people believe it has value. This is where most of US inflation is coming from, people stopped believing in the dillar and since we fired all the military advisors that would tell people no, we have a whole bunch of yes men who can't win. The Dollar was backed by the might of the US military. We fired all the people who knew how to use the military and the world took notice.

Yes, fiat currency is monopoly money. Ultimately, the true currency is energy or mass, and at a step lower, different elements to greater or lesser degrees.

 

[AnilD]

Space being cold is one of those technically true statements that becomes hilariously misleading for electronics. There's almost nothing around you to conduct the heat away, so getting rid of kilowatts of waste heat becomes the whole engineering problem.

In other words, free solar energy sounds great until you remember that your cooling system is a giant radiator, your hardware becomes obsolete every few years, and replacing a dead ASIC requires a rocket.

 

[Alfatawi Mendel]

Yes, fiat currency is monopoly money. Ultimately, the true currency is energy or mass, and at a step lower, different elements to greater or lesser degrees.

The only true currency is time. The value of everything is based on the unit of a human lifespan.