Google and SpaceX are in talks to build data centers in orbit, pitching space as the future home for AI compute, even as costs today remain far higher than on the ground.
The problems with datacenters are power consumption and water use. This addresses both problems. Sunny side picks up tons of solar generated electricity, dark side radiates heat.
Radiative IR cooling is still orders of magnitude less efficient than convective cooling. There is precisely zero percent chance that orbital data centers will be less expensive than terrestrial ones.
Does it address water use? I’m aware spacecraft have thermal management systems. But also with the chief complaint of data centers being water use, are these thermal management systems able to dissipate the same energy? You don’t need that much water for earth based data centers without an underlying massive amount of heat to get rid of. I’d wager that heat is much higher than what spacecraft typically have to get rid of. It’s the actual quantity that I’m questioning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_thermal_control
The problems with datacenters are power consumption and water use. This addresses both problems. Sunny side picks up tons of solar generated electricity, dark side radiates heat.
Radiative IR cooling is still orders of magnitude less efficient than convective cooling. There is precisely zero percent chance that orbital data centers will be less expensive than terrestrial ones.
Does it address water use? I’m aware spacecraft have thermal management systems. But also with the chief complaint of data centers being water use, are these thermal management systems able to dissipate the same energy? You don’t need that much water for earth based data centers without an underlying massive amount of heat to get rid of. I’d wager that heat is much higher than what spacecraft typically have to get rid of. It’s the actual quantity that I’m questioning.