Thermodynamics rules future orbital data centers • Hacker News Board

Re: Thermodynamics rules future orbital data centers

#111

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 8:49 PM UTC

PowerfulWizard wrote: post #52

giraffe_lady wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It assumes $44/kg to launch into orbit. Idk where that came from if it's a musk claim or what but it's ludicrous against current costs. Currently still at thousands/kg and dropping but nowhere near $44 and I haven't heard anyone claim that's likely who isn't selling a rocket company.

Musk is deliberately creating a business that needs high volume low cost launch services because in order to get low cost launch high volume is needed, and in order to get high volume a customer is needed. In the same way that Starlink launches were used to create the Falcon 9 economies of scale, the orbital AI will be used to create the Starship economies of scale. He also wants to bet the whole company on this whic…

> the orbital AI will be used to create the Starship economies of scale.

The difference is that Starlink solves a problem people actually have. Space AI solves very few real problems (immunity from regulation, physical security)

Re: Thermodynamics rules future orbital data centers

#112

Post by cwmoore » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 5:37 PM UTC

stackghost wrote: post #22

rbanffy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest data centres near the arctic - it's close to most of the Northern hemisphere's users, presents an easy option for cooling (the place is a heat sink), and, with collapsing glaciers, there will be abundant hydro power to be used. It has the killer feature of allowing a human to walk up to a rack and replace a component.

>I would suggest data centres near the arctic - it's close to most of the Northern hemisphere's users, presents an easy option for cooling (the place is a heat sink), and, with collapsing glaciers, there will be abundant hydro power to be used. Advocating for exacerbating the melting of the polar ice cap, which will endanger dozens of millions of people, just to have more convenient data centers for manufacturing AI…

stackghost, if they use less cooling power, how is that exacerbating melting ice caps? And how is making use of a resource supposed to condone the actions that brought it about? Is arctic hydropower morally unclean or something? Your "peak HN" might have a little backfire to it.

Thanks for inspiring a little fun with the "peak HN" meme:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: Thermodynamics rules future orbital data centers

#113

Post by Recurecur » Mon, Jun 15, 2026, 12:17 AM UTC

cornholio wrote: post #95

PowerfulWizard wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To remove heat by radiation there's a big benefit to running the GPUs hotter as the radiation will be proportional to the fourth power of temperature. This resource is using 85 deg C versus 60 deg C for OP which will improve cooling performance. If Nvidia/SpaceX can make the chips run at a higher temperature that would help a lot although I assume it would have already been done if it were possible. Another option is…

If radiator temperature is critical you can just run a heat pump to boost it. Modern heat pumps can get pretty close to the Carnot limit for the temperature interval, for example a pump cooling to 300K and dumping out heat at 400K (125°C) will have a theoretical COP limit of 4 and a practical limit of 2.5-3. That means that for every 3 units of heat your chips emit, you will use a 4th unit to spin the pump. If your p…

The answer seems to be large, lightweight sunshades to protect the radiative coolers. That would avoid the degradation due to UV radiation mentioned in the article and would also increase the efficiency of the coolers.