←back to thread

199 points angadh | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
energywut ◴[] No.44391208[source]
Putting a datacenter in space is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while.

Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of batteries

Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to?

Latency? Highly variable.

Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible.

Radiation shielding? Not free.

Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous!

Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and keep them fueled.

There's no upside, it's only downsides as far as I can tell.

replies(15): >>44391352 #>>44391460 #>>44391591 #>>44391677 #>>44391698 #>>44392785 #>>44392868 #>>44393116 #>>44393237 #>>44393502 #>>44393578 #>>44393769 #>>44394060 #>>44399622 #>>44403253 #
wkat4242 ◴[] No.44391698[source]
Yes cooling is difficult. Half the "solar panels" on the ISS aren't solar panels but heat radiation panels. That's the only way you can get rid of it and it's very inefficient so you need a huge surface.
replies(2): >>44392843 #>>44393701 #
Robotbeat ◴[] No.44393701[source]
This isn’t true. The radiators on ISS are MUCH smaller than the solar panels. I know it’s every single armchair engineer’s idea that heat rejection is this impossible problem in space, but your own example of ISS proves this is untrue. Radiators are no more of a problem than solar panels.
replies(2): >>44394900 #>>44397257 #
0xTJ ◴[] No.44397257[source]
The radiators are significantly smaller than the PV arrays, but not by a massive ratio; looks like about 1:3.6 based on the published area numbers that I could find.

It looks like the ISS active cooling system has a maximum cooling capacity that could handle the equivalent of a single-digit number of racks (down to 1 for an AI-focused rack).

replies(1): >>44399206 #
1. happyopossum ◴[] No.44399206[source]
if you were looking at a 10' tall spider and a 36' tall spider, yes they'd both be big but it'd be fair to say that the 10' one is much smaller....