zlacker

>>mindra+(OP)
As someone with a similar background to the writer of this post (I did avionics work for NASA before moving into more “traditional” software engineering), this post does a great job at summing up my thoughts on why space-based data centers won’t work. The SEU issues were my first though followed by the thermal concerns, and both are addressed here fantastically.

On the SEU issue I’ll add in that even in LEO you can still get SEUs - the ISS is in LEO and gets SEUs on occasion. There’s also the South Atlantic Anomaly where spacecraft in LEO see a higher number of SEUs.

>>kevdev+N6
The only advantage I can come up with is the background temperature being much colder than Earth surface. If you ignored the capex cost to get this launched and running in orbit, could the cooling cost be smaller? Maybe that's the gimmick being used to sell the idea. "Yes it costs more upfront but then the 40% cooling bill goes away... breakeven in X years"

>>foobar+lk
Things on earth also have access to that coldness for about half of each day. How many data centers use radiative cooling into the night sky to supplement their regular cooling? The fact that the answer is “zero” should tell you all you need to know about how useful this is.

>>wat100+rk1
Look up Tech Ingredients episode on Radiative Paint.

The fact that people aren’t using something isn’t evidence that it’s not possible or even a great idea, it could be that a practical application didn’t exist before or someone enterprising enough hasn’t come along yet.

>>oceanp+Fx2
When something has been known for millennia and hasn’t been put to a particular use even after decades where it could have been used, that is pretty good evidence that this use isn’t a good idea. Especially when it’s something really simple.

Radiative cooling is great for achieving temperature a bit below ambient at night when you don’t have any modern refrigeration equipment. That’s about all. It’s used in space applications because it’s literally the only option.