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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. rootno+qT2[view] [source] 2026-02-04 15:45:17
>>beloch+kK
“Musk is on to something here”? Really? Any high school student with a basic grasp of physics could explain that. But sure, the idiot billionaire nazi “is on to something”. That’s giving him too much credit.

Of course it doesn’t fucking make sense to put data centers into space. Even if heating were solved somehow magically, server disks are veeery prone to fail and need replacement. Shoot a rocket up every week to replace failed drives or absolutely burned through GPUs? Yeah, that doesn’t even remotely sound feasible.

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3. jvande+XT2[view] [source] 2026-02-04 15:47:11
>>rootno+qT2
Unless you want cash-rich AI companies to pay a certain company for weekly / daily lifts during the build-out phase. Eventual crash be damned, make hay while the sun shines
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4. rootno+fV2[view] [source] 2026-02-04 15:52:23
>>jvande+XT2
And burn even more energy and fuel than DCs on the ground, great idea :D
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5. jvande+6O3[view] [source] 2026-02-04 19:54:28
>>rootno+fV2
Nobody said it was a good idea except his accountant, who doesn't pay the energy bills.
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