Data centers in space makes no sense • Hacker News Board

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#171

Post by cluckindan » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 12:18 AM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #162

beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

Not disagreeing with you at all: that physics fact always come up. My honest question is: if it's a perfect thermos, what does, for example, the ISS do with the heat generated by computers and humans burning calories? The ISS is equipped with a mechanism to radiate excess heat into space? Or is the ISS slowly heating up but it's not a problem?

Let me google that for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Contro...

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#172

Post by vidarh » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 12:19 AM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #162

beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

Not disagreeing with you at all: that physics fact always come up. My honest question is: if it's a perfect thermos, what does, for example, the ISS do with the heat generated by computers and humans burning calories? The ISS is equipped with a mechanism to radiate excess heat into space? Or is the ISS slowly heating up but it's not a problem?

The ISS has giant heat sinks[1]. Those heat sinks are necessary for just the modest heat generated on the ISS, and should give an idea of what a sattelite full of GPU's might require...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Contro...

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#173

Post by tzs » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 12:19 AM UTC

eek2121 wrote: post #146

beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

Not going to read the article, because Data centers in space = DOA is common sense to me, however, did the article really claim cooling wasn't an issue? Do they not understand the laws of thermodynamics, physics, etc? Sure, space is cold. Good luck cooling your gear with a vacuum. Don't even get me started on radiation, or even lack of gravity when it comes to trying to run high powered compute in space. If you think…

> Not going to read the article, because Data centers in space = DOA is common sense to me, however, did the article really claim cooling wasn't an issue?

No. Nearly everyone that talks about data centers in space talks about cooling. The point of this article was to talk about other problems that would remain even if the most commonly talked about problems were solved.

It says:

> But even if we stipulate that radiation, cooling, latency, and launch costs are all solved, other fundamental issues still make orbital data centers, at least as SpaceX understands them, a complete fantasy.

and then talks about some of those other issues.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#174

Post by jamiek88 » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 12:20 AM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #162

beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

Not disagreeing with you at all: that physics fact always come up. My honest question is: if it's a perfect thermos, what does, for example, the ISS do with the heat generated by computers and humans burning calories? The ISS is equipped with a mechanism to radiate excess heat into space? Or is the ISS slowly heating up but it's not a problem?

The ISS has MASSIVE radiators. Most of its volume is radiator. 900 cubic meters of space 2500 square meters of radiator.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#175

Post by bethekidyouwant » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 12:20 AM UTC

reactordev wrote: post #105

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any country capable of producing nuclear warheads will also be able to toss up enough BBs and other small objects into LEO to wipe out most of Starlink and anything else in LEO. At least on Earth data centers in theory can be hidden and physically hardened. In orbit, even a crude rocket able to reach that plane can become a weapon of mass satellite destruction. Even if those orbits clear out in four or five years, by…

They also fail to realize how devastating an attack a BB canister grenade would be in LEO. Nothing would stay in orbit. Eventually everything would collide and come down.

No?

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#176

Post by jamiek88 » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 12:20 AM UTC

aunty_helen wrote: post #127

beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

The equation has a ^4 to the temperature. If you raise the temperature of your radiator by ~50 degrees you double its emission capacity. This is well within the range of specialised phase change compressors, aka fancy air conditioning pumps. Next up in the equation is surface emissivity which we’ve got a lot of experience in the automotive sector. And finally surface area, once again, getting quite good here with nan…

This makes zero sense.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#177

Post by lancewiggs » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 12:21 AM UTC

beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

It's exiting the 5th best social network and the 10th (or worse) best AI company and selling them to a decent company.

It probably increases Elon's share of the combined entity.

It delivers on a promise to investors that he will make money for them, even as the underlying businesses are lousy.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#178

Post by stouset » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 12:21 AM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #162

beloch wrote: post #115

I would not assume cooling has been worked out. Space is a vacuum. i.e. The lack-of-a-thing that makes a thermos great at keeping your drink hot. A satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos. A data center in space would necessarily rely completely on cooling by radiation, unlike a terrestrial data center that can make use of convection and conduction. You can't just pipe heat out into the atmosphere or build…

Not disagreeing with you at all: that physics fact always come up. My honest question is: if it's a perfect thermos, what does, for example, the ISS do with the heat generated by computers and humans burning calories? The ISS is equipped with a mechanism to radiate excess heat into space? Or is the ISS slowly heating up but it's not a problem?

The TL;DR is they radiate it into space via large, high surface area arms that stick out of the station.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#179

Post by vidarh » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 12:21 AM UTC

bs7280 wrote: post #163

As a thought experiment, if humanity wanted to go all in on trying to move industrial processes and data centers off planet, would it make more sense to do so on the moon? The moon has: - Some water - Some materials that can be used to manufacture crude things (like heat sinks?) - a ton of area to brute force the heat sink problem - a surface to burry the data centers under to solve the radiation problem - close enou…

Probably a lot easier, but the moon looses a major selling point of data centres in space, namely reasonable latency. To be clear, I don't think it's a good idea. But I think that specifically the way Musk is trying to position it, the moon would be an even harder sell.

Re: Data centers in space makes no sense

#180

Post by bs7280 » Wed, Feb 04, 2026, 12:21 AM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #170

bs7280 wrote: post #163

As a thought experiment, if humanity wanted to go all in on trying to move industrial processes and data centers off planet, would it make more sense to do so on the moon? The moon has: - Some water - Some materials that can be used to manufacture crude things (like heat sinks?) - a ton of area to brute force the heat sink problem - a surface to burry the data centers under to solve the radiation problem - close enou…

What if instead we moved it all to a closer rock that has even more water, even more materials to manufacture crude (and even advanced) things, even more surface, more protection from radiation, and even crazier still had significantly less launch costs? Almost any reason why the moon is better than in orbit is a point for putting it on earth.

I think there's something to be said about imagining a future where we can keep the earth clean of all the nasty industrial processes we have grown accustomed to living next to. A big part about this proposed idea is that you could do a lot of manufactoring in space.

I have long theorized there will be some game changing manufacturing processes that can only be done in a zero gravity environment. EX:

- 3d printing human organ replacements to solve the organ donor problem

- stronger materials

- 3d computer chips

I do not work in material science, so these crude ideas are just that, but the important part I'm getting at is that we can make things in space without any launches once that industry is bootstrapped.