I don't understand how data centres in space make any sense at all given the heat constraints. Has there been some plausible breakthrough in heat dissipation technology recently?
Re:SpaceX – Starfall
by DrewADesign on Thursday November 05, 2026 @10:02AM
(#50379963)
No, but every day, armchair business analysts and people high on AI optimism expand the infinite frontier of blind faith and unfounded optimism in the future value of LLM infrastructure.
Radiative cooling isn't as big of an impediment as people think. It's part of the reason why a desert that's 120F+ during the day gets so cold so fast unless there's cloud cover to radiate back.[1] IIUC correctly, the theoretical maximum is over 400 watts per square meter, and existing tech can achieve 80-90+% of that. It's an engineering challenge, but no more than creating reusable rockets. The real challenge is building a reliable convective system from the heat source to the radiating mechanism, and just the general problems of building a compact package for delivery that then unpacks and orients itself once in orbit. No new science is required, and you can pencil things out today the same way Musk did when penciling out the economics of building a reusable rocket.
[1] Convection effects are also involved, but that cuts both ways as the air is also radiating back at you. A significant fraction of the net cooling is pure radiative.
Re:SpaceX – Starfall
by jurgenburgen on Saturday November 07, 2026 @03:43AM
(#50402791)
> In space you don't have to worry about managing political winds at all; you control everything.
You ignore global geopolitics at your own peril. In space you have no government to protect you when a hostile nation state blows up your infrastructure.
Maybe they didn't predict the magnitude and vitriol of the backlash, but NIMBY resistance to all infrastructure projects has only been growing over the years. For example, wrt solar and wind power. It was obvious data centers were going to see at least as much resistance because you need to build the data centers and more power generation.
Do data centers in space make less sense than build outs in more accommodating countries? Not necessarily. It's not an either/or thing, and it all depends on the concrete bottom line numbers. In space you don't have to worry about managing political winds at all; you control everything. More accomodating countries tend to be poorer with worse infrastructure, so there are more unknown risks. And you don't need to develop or manage a foreign workforce, which is why 100% of Silicon Valley jobs didn't instantly jump to India or Poland.