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[return to "Data centers in space makes no sense"]
1. beloch+kK[view] [source] 2026-02-03 23:33:46
>>ajyoon+(OP)
I would not assume cooling has been worked out.

Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build a heat exchanger. You can't exchange heat with vacuum. You can only radiate heat into it.

Heat is going to limit the compute that can be done in a satellite data centre and radiative cooling solutions are going to massively increase weight. It makes far more sense to build data centers in the arctic.

Musk is up to something here. This could be another hyperloop (i.e. A distracting promise meant to sabotage competition). It could be a legal dodge. It could be a power grab. What it will not be is a useful source of computing power. Anyone who takes this venture seriously is probably going to be burned.

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2. pokot0+P11[view] [source] 2026-02-04 01:17:23
>>beloch+kK
Can’t you heat exchange inside the satellite, and make one part of the satellite incredibly hot so that it radiates a lot and dissipates.

This is just a question. I have no expertise at all with this.

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3. pas+I21[view] [source] 2026-02-04 01:23:42
>>pokot0+P11
Yes, but you need energy to pump heat, and that has an efficiency maximum (thx ~~Obama~~ Carnot), and radiative cooling scales with the ~4th power of the temperature, so it has to be really hot, and so it requires a lot of energy to "cool down" the already relatively cool side and use that "heat" to heat up the other side that's a thousand degree hotter.

All in all, the cooling system would likely consume more energy than the compute parts.

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