zlacker

>>wiley1+(OP)
Unless they've figured out some impressive cooling tech, which I would expect would be worth more than the rest of their company combined, then this is pretty much DoA. "More efficient cooling architecture taking advantage of higher ΔT in space" would indeed be useful if you had a nice medium to radiate into. It turns out that thermal radiation is incredibly poor into the vacuum of space lol.

>>vonneu+Od
Space (with a sunshade) is a nearly perfect medium into which to radiate heat, in the sense that there’s nothing better.

But I agree with your general point. At 100°C, you can radiate about 1kW/m^2. That’s 1000m^2 of radiator per MW of datacenter, assuming you can operate with the radiator at 100°C. You can fudge this a bit with a heat pump (to run the radiator hotter, paying a linear-ish power penalty and gaining a fourth-power radiation benefit), but that’s expensive and that power isn’t free.

Here on Earth, you can cool by conduction or evaporation, which isn’t an option in space.

>>amluto+ug
I guess you could cool by conduction in space if you build it on the moon?