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[–] 109 points 8 months ago (52 children)

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?

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  • [–] 92 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [+] 36 points 8 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Please tell me you aren't serious.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago* (14 children)

    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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  • [+] 16 points 8 months ago* (4 children)
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    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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  • [–] -4 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    The heat would be moving at the same speed. Though, that does mean it wouldn't be any better in any other orbit.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (19 children)
  • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (18 children)

    What's going to be performing convection to dissipate heat from the radiator in a manner to support the heat generated by an AI data center?

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  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    What you don’t understand is the size requirements those radiators would need to have to cool an entire data center.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Right. Exactly zero understanding on your part.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (2 children)

    My opinion and thoughts: dunking on idiots online brings me joy.

    So I guess the last one I suppose. If I just had to pick one.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Tell me you don't know how radiators actually work without telling me. They dissipate heat via convection through the air surrounding them or gasses in general. What does space lack a significant amount of?

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Yeah so there is some confusion here. The are radiators on cars or in houses, but those are more accurately heat exchangers. Then there are things like heat lamps, which are really IR radiators that convert electricity to infrared light that feels hot.

    Most of the heat you feel at a camp fire is radiant from the flame, unless you are down wind and feeling some convective heat, but most of that heat goes straight up with the smoke.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    There's a difference certainly but do you think the people who seem to be floating this idea know the difference?

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    Hard to say, but they’ve been using resistive radiative cooling In space a long time.

    Also a tech ingredients made a neat video about building one and radiating heat out into space from the ground. It was cool to see what happened when it was cloudy and stopped working.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Obnoxious as he seems to be, he's actually right, there will be no convection, but they'd radiate heat in a vacuum, by IR IIRC.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    To do that they'd have to be filled with something other than something water based to be able to do that over a large area which would require constant maintenance to do so. It's not easily feasible and I doubt people who want to do this or defend it realize that. I have to look it up but it takes Anhydrous Ammonia to perform that in the ISS. Like this is a bad idea and it fries my brain people trying to defend this.

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