There was one study where they set the price of launching at 0 and it’s still a lot more expensive to use data centers in space.

For anyone who doesn’t know, this is because space is an absolutely terrible place to put computers. Getting power is actually the easiest problem to solve, and is still really hard, because building any kind of infrastructure in space is hard. Then you’ve got all that radiation you have to shield against because you’re no longer protected by the Earth’s atmosphere, and worst of all you’ve got the cooling problem because Jesus fucking Christ, space is not cold!

This is why I get annoyed every time a scifi movie shows people freezing to death in space. Because it leads to this level of mass delusion and then suddenly it matters and everyone just unquestioningly believes the lie that space is cold. Space is a vacuum. A vacuum is what your Contigo travel mug uses to keep your coffee scalding hot after four hours. If vacuums are that good at keeping something hot when it naturally wants to get colder, think about what they’ll do to something that is actively generating heat. All of your components are going to cook.

There are proposals to put data centres at the bottom of the ocean that are substantially more credible than this idiocy.

I don’t know if it would work but… Could an infrared laser expel enough heat?

You could cool them through radiative panels bit you would need quite big panels to radiate away the heat a data center produces.