Orbit Compute Lab

About Orbit Compute Lab

The core idea behind orbital AI compute, made playable. A satellite's solar array makes power, GPUs turn it into compute and waste heat, a battery carries the load through eclipse, and radiators are the only way to get heat out. A controller throttles the GPUs so the satellite never runs out of power or overheats.

The rack inside — Rack · firmware tab

• The satellite is one NVL72-class GPU rack. The Rack · firmware tab replays real recorded scenarios from Rack Fault Lab (a C++ BMC firmware core) tick-for-tick: the per-GPU state machine, the SEL event log, and the regression checks the test suite asserts. A radiation SEU storm, silent data corruption and a radiator shortfall are the orbit failure modes; the policies-off run fails on purpose. Same rack, two views — this page is the orbital envelope, that one is the firmware.

Camera

• Follow trails the satellite · Onboard rides it · Earth / Satellite orbit either one (drag / scroll) · Top looks down on the orbit. Sites toggles the ground-site labels.

Ground sites (real SpaceX / Starmind locations)

• Launch: Starbase TX (Starship), Vandenberg CA (polar / sun-synchronous), Cape Canaveral FL. Build & test: Bastrop TX (Gigasat / Starlink factory), McGregor TX (engine test). Compute & ops: Memphis TN (Colossus), Hawthorne CA (HQ), Redmond WA (Starlink).

The balance it models

• Power: in sunlight the array charges the battery and runs the load; in eclipse the battery carries it. Demand over supply → compute cut (power limit).
• Heat: compute becomes heat; radiators shed to a ceiling. Past 90 °C → compute capped (thermal limit).
• Overclock & the fault policy: push demand past 100% and the GPUs draw more than the array makes — the battery drains and they run past the safe limit. With the fault policy on, a protective thermal trip saves them (in sunlight the trip fires first ~20 s; in eclipse the battery browns out first). Turn the policy off and overclock and nothing stops it — the rack runs to a total meltdown and GPUs are destroyed. Same lesson as the firmware's policies-off scenario, on the hardware itself.

Satellite specs

• AI1 · Starmind — the production design (210 kW array, NVL72, sun-synchronous); thermally limited, so overclock melts it down. AI1-B · burst — oversized radiators, power-limited: overclock drains the battery first, then the policy safe-shuts-down and auto-reboots once it has recharged for a safe start. AI1-XL · heavy — more array/compute and a big battery for deep eclipses. Each lists its real charge/discharge rate on the Battery tile.

What's physically grounded vs. stylized

• Grounded: the power/heat trade-off; the controller throttles compute as the GPUs approach 90 °C so temperature can't run away; the solar arrays track the Sun on an array drive (not thrusters), with a smooth penumbra ramp at the shadow edges; the body nadir-points at Earth; the orbit is a fixed repeating path (the ring).
• Stylized: the launch is a cinematic ascent, not a real trajectory; Earth, orbit and satellite are not to scale; thermal/power use lumped first-order models. Attitude in reality is held by reaction wheels / magnetorquers; thrusters do orbit keeping.

Assumptions (round, illustrative)

Daevin Oey · a simulation built with AI assistance; I designed the model and can walk through every part · see also Rack Fault Lab