The problems; plural; is that the person who popularized the idea of data centers in space has little to zero understanding of any of the space sciences and yet owns and directs one of the world’s largest, and privately owned, aerospace companies with massive government contracts that splits its time with their own AI work.
Have you never seen a movie set in space? Evrytime someone gets sucked into space they freeze. You saying every movie got it wrong?? Space is cold. Duh.
It would be 20kW for each rack or two. The types of data centre deal they talk about these days are measured in GW of compute. That’s 50,000x just for 1GW.
Very large scale datacenters would likely have some nasty fluid handling problems to solve.
I’ll just note that I am not a fan of putting internet infrastructure in space. I think polluting the upper atmosphere with a bunch of metals every time a satellite deorbits will certainly have negative consequences. So IMO space should be limited to things we can’t do with earthbound infrastructure.
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.
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.
The solar panels needed is another problem for the space data center fantasy. Once you put together all the mass over enough surface area to make it work, you would blot out the sun worldwide.
Yeah the amount of heat a data center vs a satellite your going to super heat the space in that orbit over time. It they are geostationary then its even harder as the the data center doesn’t move away from the heat.
Um, it doesn’t make the data center in orbit thing make sense, but a geostationary satellite absolute moves at high speed and does not stay in the same place in space.
Again, it doesn’t help the case, but just… no. The heat gets out of the spacecraft by radiating, and radiation doesn’t move in a circular orbit around Earth, it moves at speed of light outwards from where it started.
Thermal energy is primarily dissipated as infrared light which moves at the speed of light. There is no way for space to accumulate heat. If that were the case the entire solar system would be unlivable. The IR emitted by satellites is truly negligible in comparison to the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the sun.
Radiators in space work by radiating electromagnetic energy(light). Heat can only accumulate in matter, not in space, so that is definitely not one of the things we need to worry about.
geostationary then its even harder as the the data center doesn’t move away from the heat.
Geostationary would leave the satellite in shadow anytime it was night time over the part of the earth since a geostationary orbit is stationary in the sky over a given point at the equator.
That doesn’t solve any of the cooling problems just saying that you do get some shadow at geostationary orbits.
There are other orbits that get less shadow though.
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?
The problems; plural; is that the person who popularized the idea of data centers in space has little to zero understanding of any of the space sciences and yet owns and directs one of the world’s largest, and privately owned, aerospace companies with massive government contracts that splits its time with their own AI work.
We already have data centers in space.
Oh? Good. Problem solved then.
User name checks out, though
Have you never seen a movie set in space? Evrytime someone gets sucked into space they freeze. You saying every movie got it wrong?? Space is cold. Duh.
Please tell me you aren’t serious.
dude! how do you expect anyone to answer if you don’t say surely you can’t be?
I am serious, and don’t call me dude!
Dude stop
Easy, just create a long heat sink and dangle it in the earth’s atmosphere. Now we are winning!
From that to a space elevator…
How would you power them?
The surface area of solar panels exceeds the surface area needed for radiators to cool everything.
In space I would imagine you’d find the perfect sandwich ratio. One bun solar, one bun radiators, the meat being the racks.
Raditors. Starlink v3 can in theory already shed (edit 20) kW of heat. But they would need to figure out how to 5x that and keep things profitable.
It would be 20kW for each rack or two. The types of data centre deal they talk about these days are measured in GW of compute. That’s 50,000x just for 1GW.
These aren’t big things, they’re small satellites. They’re going to be ~100kW. They only need to 5x the existing radiator they think will work.
A radiator. Next question?
With radiators just like with every existing satellite system.
https://youtu.be/DCto6UkBJoI&t=12m57s
Very large scale datacenters would likely have some nasty fluid handling problems to solve.
I’ll just note that I am not a fan of putting internet infrastructure in space. I think polluting the upper atmosphere with a bunch of metals every time a satellite deorbits will certainly have negative consequences. So IMO space should be limited to things we can’t do with earthbound infrastructure.
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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.
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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.
The solar panels needed is another problem for the space data center fantasy. Once you put together all the mass over enough surface area to make it work, you would blot out the sun worldwide.
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They’re called fins. Not panels.
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Yeah the amount of heat a data center vs a satellite your going to super heat the space in that orbit over time. It they are geostationary then its even harder as the the data center doesn’t move away from the heat.
Um, it doesn’t make the data center in orbit thing make sense, but a geostationary satellite absolute moves at high speed and does not stay in the same place in space.
The heat would be moving at the same speed. Though, that does mean it wouldn’t be any better in any other orbit.
Again, it doesn’t help the case, but just… no. The heat gets out of the spacecraft by radiating, and radiation doesn’t move in a circular orbit around Earth, it moves at speed of light outwards from where it started.
Thermal energy is primarily dissipated as infrared light which moves at the speed of light. There is no way for space to accumulate heat. If that were the case the entire solar system would be unlivable. The IR emitted by satellites is truly negligible in comparison to the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the sun.
Super heat what in that space? The point is there’s nothing to transfer heat to. All you can do is radiate infra-red light.
Radiators in space work by radiating electromagnetic energy(light). Heat can only accumulate in matter, not in space, so that is definitely not one of the things we need to worry about.
Geostationary would leave the satellite in shadow anytime it was night time over the part of the earth since a geostationary orbit is stationary in the sky over a given point at the equator.
That doesn’t solve any of the cooling problems just saying that you do get some shadow at geostationary orbits.
There are other orbits that get less shadow though.
It’ll be in shadow at midnight, yes, but not necessarily at any other time. Geostationary orbit is at about 7x the radius of the earth.
As such, the period when in will actually be in shadow is only a short period directly behind the planet.