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A comment on Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea. Parent comment

Re:Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea by MadnessASAP on Saturday November 29, 2025 @10:20PM (#46093316)
Technically radiation cooling is 100% efficient. And remarkably effective, you can cool an inert object to the temperature of the CMBR (4K) without doing anything at all. However it is rather slow and works best if there's no nearby planets or stars.

Fun fact though, make your radiator hotter and you can dump just as much if not more energy then you would typically via convective cooling. At 1400C (just below the melting point of steel) you can shed 450kW of heat per square meter, all you need is a really fancy heat pump!

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Re:Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea by wat10000 on Saturday November 29, 2025 @11:41PM (#46093807)
How much power would a square meter at 1400C shed from convection?
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Re:Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea by baobrien on Sunday November 30, 2025 @12:31AM (#46094100)
Not much in space; There's almost no matter to convect!
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Re:Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea by fsh on Sunday November 30, 2025 @02:06AM (#46094506)
A sports car radiator has about that size and dumps 1 MW without boiling the coolant.
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Re:Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea by alextingle on Sunday November 30, 2025 @02:54AM (#46094727)
A car's "radiator" doesn't actually lose heat by radiation though. It conducts heat to the air rushing through it. That's absolutely nothing like a radiator in a vacuum.
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Re:Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea by fsh on Sunday November 30, 2025 @03:53AM (#46095008)
That's the point. Forced air cooling is way more efficient than radiative cooling.
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Re:Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea by tsimionescu on Sunday November 30, 2025 @08:50AM (#46096629)
The question was about comparing the 1400KW of radiative cooling to how much convective coolig you could get from the same radiator on Earth.
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Re:Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea by MadnessASAP on Sunday November 30, 2025 @02:48AM (#46094696)
I dont have firm numbers for you since it would depend on environmental conditions. As an educated guess though, I would say a fucking shit ton. You wouldn't want to be anywhere near the damn thing.
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Re:Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea by fsh on Sunday November 30, 2025 @02:12AM (#46094524)
Your hypothetical liquid metal heat pump would have a Carnot efficiency of only 25%.
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