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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. matt-p+Hb1[view] [source] 2026-02-04 02:27:35
>>beloch+kK
(DTC) Datacentres take electricity and turn it into low grade heat e.g 60c water. Put them anywhere where you've either got excess (cheap) energy or where you can use the heat. Either is fine, both is great, but neither is both bad and current standard practice.

It's perfectly possible to put small data centres in city centres and pipe the heat around town, they take up very very little space and if you're consuming the heat, you don't need the noisy cooling towers (Ok maybe a little in summer).

Similarly if you stick your datacentre right next to a big nuclear power plant, nobody is even going to notice let alone care.

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3. Menger+wA1[view] [source] 2026-02-04 06:27:46
>>matt-p+Hb1
Resistive heating is a tremendously inefficient way to generate heat. Sometimes it's worth it if you get something useful in exchange (such as full spectrum light in the winter). But it's not all upsides.

Heat pumps are magic. They're something like 300% efficient. Each watt generates 3 watts of useful heat.

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4. lamber+VI1[view] [source] 2026-02-04 07:45:12
>>Menger+wA1
I share your enthusiasm about heat pumps, but I wonder what the efficiency of using waste heat is. Couldn't it be competitive with heat pumps? As it's a waste product, isn't it reasonable to also expect it to be more than 100% efficient?
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5. Neverm+5v2[view] [source] 2026-02-04 13:44:20
>>lamber+VI1
You can’t extract energy from heat by itself. Only from a heat delta.

Think of heat like flowing water or charge. Only an altitude or voltage delta creates the flow needed to harvest energy.

You get no useful energy from heat you are already trying to shed because you have no delta to work with. (The entire problem exists because there is no surrounding environment with high heat capacity and lower heat.)

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6. Correc+TK3[view] [source] 2026-02-04 19:35:22
>>Neverm+5v2
What is waste heat depends on your usecase. Using waste heat from industrial processes for district heating is done in some places.
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