zlacker

>>pseudo+(OP)
> Some parts of the moon are permanently shadowed and therefore extremely cold, as low as -173 °C. This means that no energy or water would need to be expended to cool the data center.

That doesn't sound right to me. If there's no air, then only black body radiation can be used to cool the data center. That means a massive radiator, a lot larger than a heat-to-air radiator+fan used on earth.

>>M95D+E6
A 1 meter square heat exchanger in a vacuum at 20C will emit about 1 kilowatt at -173C. So about as much as a small space heater per small panel. So a 1 megawatt datacenter would need about 300,000m^2 or 0.3 km^2 of surface area to cool it.

But geothermal cooling would be great on the moon too. Run a pipe 2 meters under the lunar surface and it is -21C.

I think the whole idea though is to make a low wattage space-stead so you can store copies of Moana out of reach of Disney cease and desist letters.

>>foxyv+Qs
> But geothermal cooling would be great on the moon too. Run a pipe 2 meters under the lunar surface and it is -21C.

Isn't the moon geologically dead though - no water or geological movements?

I worry this would just result in the ground absorbing the waste heat and eventually becoming too warm to effectively cool anything. Especially because the ground itself would eventually still be limited by the rate of radiative cooling into space, right?

>>solid_+Ft
Geological activity is usually a problem for geothermal cooling. Conductivity of lunar subsurface is your main problem. Generally what makes geothermal really effective is the monstrous thermal mass of solid and liquid material compared to air as well as it's much higher conductivity. While that is true on Earth, on the Moon things are very different.

The problem isn't so much geological activity or lack thereof, as the nature of lunar regolith. Lunar regolith has a conductivity of 0.004W/mK. That is lower than aerogel! So unless the subsurface has a much higher conductivity, using subsurface cooling would be doomed.

Edit: Lunar Regolith is only the first 4-5 meters of the lunar surface.