Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.

https://reddthat.com/post/61132939

Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea. - Reddthat

Lemmy

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.

seems the bottom of ocean equally stupid. in space you would have to deal with comsic/solar radiation damaging a satellite-type data center, and then you need solar cells/nuclear power, space debris is another problem.

a bottom of the ocean you would have to deal with the enormous pressures, even at several hundred feet down, corrosion, critters living or clogging up the 'buildings, silt.

Yes, the bottom of the ocean is a terrible place to put a data centre. And the fact that it is, somehow, still a more practical option than space is a really good indicator of how unbelievably stupid the entire notion of space data centres is.