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[return to "Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship"]
1. weinzi+N31[view] [source] 2025-06-27 08:19:30
>>angadh+(OP)
I worked in aerospace for a couple of years in the beginning of my career. While my area of expertise was the mechanical design I shared my office with the guy who did the thermal design and I learned two things:

1. Satellites are mostly run at room temperature. It doesn't have to be that way but it simplifies a lot of things.

2. Every satellite is a delicately balanced system where heat generation and actively radiating surfaces need to be in harmony during the whole mission.

Preventing the vehicle from getting too hot is usually a much bigger problem than preventing it from getting too cold. This might be surprising because laypeople usually associate space with cold. In reality you can always heat if you have energy but cooling is hard if all you have is radiation and you are operating at a fixed and relatively low temperature level.

The bottom line is that running a datacenter in space makes not much sense from a thermal standpoint and there must be other compelling reasons for a decision to do so.

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2. teeker+071[view] [source] 2025-06-27 08:50:32
>>weinzi+N31
Lay people associate space with cold because nearly every scifi movie has people freezing over in seconds when exposed to the vacuum of space (insert Picard face-palm gif).

Even The Expanse, even them! Although they are otherwise so realistic, that I have to say I started doubting myself a bit. I wonder what would really would happen and how fast...

People even complained that Leia did not freeze over (in stead of complaining about her sudden use of the force where previously she did not show any such talents.)

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3. fennec+ec1[view] [source] 2025-06-27 09:49:22
>>teeker+071
Well empty space has a temperature of roughly -270c...so that's pretty cold.

But I think what people/movies don't understand is that there's almost no conductive thermal transfer going on, because there's not much matter to do it. It's all radiation, which is why heat is a much bigger problem, because you can only radiate heat away, you can't conduct it. And whatever you use to radiate heat away can also potentially receive radiation from things like the Sun, making your craft even hotter.

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