TL;DW:
Does It Make Sense To Put Data Centers In Space?
At some point in the future, yes.
Can They Really Cost Less To Operate?
In theory, yes.
Scott expresses concerns that current startups have not adequately addressed some of the practical challenges, such as cooling.
Effective cooling seems like a big one in space, especially for a datacenter.
Wouldn’t it be way hotter unless they stay in the shade? 🤔
It would be way hotter in general. Conductive cooling requires a medium to transfer heat. In a vacuum, you only have radiation, which doesn’t cool quickly enough for a shit ton of processors. In the sun, it would be worse, but they would need cooling even in the shade.
Now I am wondering can a fan move heat in a vacuum? I assume not because they don’t move the heat but the air around the hot thing, but I also don’t know much about thermodynamics especially in a vacuum.
You nailed it. Fans move air. Hot air away, cool air in, and that’s how a fan cools. In a vacuum, it would just spin until friction slowed it down, so technically it would generate heat.
So you’d need to be able to radiate more heat away than you absorb from the sun (and generate from computing). You can reduce sun absorption by being more reflective. For the heat you do absorb and generate, you’ll need to concentrate the heat from all the systems into a radiator that gets very hot. The hotter something is the more it’ll radiate away. It’s hardly a simple design but it’s really the only option.