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[return to "Data centers in space makes no sense"]
1. Starma+vq[view] [source] 2026-02-03 21:44:34
>>ajyoon+(OP)
Very confused by this plan. Data centers on Earth are struggling with how to get rid of waste heat. It's really, really hard to get rid of waste heat in space. That seems to be about the worst possible place to put a data center.
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2. Keyfra+Jv[view] [source] 2026-02-03 22:12:41
>>Starma+vq
Very confused by this plan.

How about now? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3ex92557jo

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3. genera+GB[view] [source] 2026-02-03 22:43:24
>>Keyfra+Jv
Well this explains why, but does not answer how to get rid of excessive heat in space.
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4. avmich+hK[view] [source] 2026-02-03 23:33:41
>>genera+GB
What kind of the problem you're talking about compared to existing satellites? That is, all existing satellites generate power, and need to dissipate that power, and most of it goes to waste heat, and the satellites somehow do that successfully - what is the specific problem you're talking about, which can't be solved by the same means?
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5. nilamo+AM[view] [source] 2026-02-03 23:44:04
>>avmich+hK
Are there many of those current satellites running gpus and actually generating lots of heat?
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6. avmich+eV[view] [source] 2026-02-04 00:34:38
>>nilamo+AM
Principally speaking, as much energy as satellite receives from solar panels it needs to send away - and often a lot of it is in the form of heat. So, the question is, how much energy is received in the first place. We currently have some quarter of megawatt of solar panels of ISS, so in principal - in principal - we know how to do this kind of scale per satellite. In practice we perhaps will have more smaller satellites which together aggregate the compute to the necessary lever and power to the corresponding level.
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7. vel0ci+b51[view] [source] 2026-02-04 01:40:12
>>avmich+eV
> We currently have some quarter of megawatt of solar panels of ISS

It's average outbut is like half of that though. So something the size of the space station, a massive thing which is largely solar panels and radiators, can do like 120kW sustained. Like 1-2 racks of GPUs, assuming you used the entire power budget on GPUs.

And we're going to build and launch millions of these.

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