lemmydividebyzeroDatacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.
My question is always how the hell are you going to cool them. Do you know hard it is to move heat in a vacuum?
With radiators just like with every existing satellite system.
Very large scale datacenters would likely have some nasty fluid handling problems to solve.
Why Everyone Is Talking About Data Centers In Space
Have you seen the size of the radiators on the ISS ? And that’s just what needed for cooling of body heat for 9 people and basic computer and support equipment.
A data center that is actively pumping out massive amounts of heat would need humongous radiator panels.
fallaciousBasisThey’re called fins, not panels.
You seem rather dull.
They’re called fins. Not panels.
The area of radiator needed directly corresponds to the amount of power harvested by the solar panels. It doesn’t matter what the load is. So a compute frame with the same amount of solar panels as the space station would need approximately the same radiatot area as the ISS, unless you are bringing nuclear power into the mix.
I agree that space based datacenters are a bad idea, but the thermals really are not the gotcha people are making them out to be.
And you can only build so many of those radiator panels before you start running into congestion problems. You don’t want them radiating onto each other.