Ask HN: Datacenters in Space Before Alaska?
I am curious as to why there is already talk of putting data centers into space rather than the much more manageable cold locations we have in the states such as Alaska. Does anyone here know by chance?
I am curious as to why there is already talk of putting data centers into space rather than the much more manageable cold locations we have in the states such as Alaska. Does anyone here know by chance?
In space there is 10 to 1000x more powerful solar energy afaik. One side is super cold, facilitating emitting waste heat into space, and the other side provides all the energy you need, 24x7. The main challenge is moving the datacenter out of solar storm zones with sufficient advance notice, but this is entirely possible using early-warning solar monitoring satellites and basic propulsion.
It's way harder to cooling things in space than on earth. You can't use convection to dump heat into a vacuum. Radiative cooling is much slower and harder to scale.
Apart from heat radiation they have to worry about other satellites, trash and lastly ionising radiation, since they have to put the satellites far wider away than normally.
Space trash ceases to be an issue in the ultra large scale when self-healing properties exist. We are not at that level of technology, and our technology has no healing capabilities whatsoever, but we can't get there if we don't try.
Well, we also can’t get to Arctic data centers without trying and I’d argue that’s far more likely to be achievable of a goal.
Radiative cooling depends on surfaces. Where do you think all the waste heat from the Earth goes if not into space...