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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. Symmet+eK2[view] [source] 2026-02-04 15:03:09
>>beloch+kK
Space is a vacuum and yet here we are on a rock floating in space warmed by the sun and the temperate is actually pretty comfortable. Indeed, without the greenhouse effect it would be positively chilly. An important part of a thermos is that you have to use high albedo materials in the vacuum chamber or else it would lose heat too quickly to radiation.

A satellite as a whole will come to thermal equilibrium with space at a fairly reasonable temperature, the problematic part is that the properties of electricity make it easy to concentrate a good part of the incoming energy in a small area where the GPU is. Heat is harder to move than electricity and getting that heat back out to the solar panels or radiators requires either heavy heat pipes or complex coolant pumps.

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