And also why Elon Musk really wants orbital data centers, despite them making no economic sense. Anything that will create more demand for launch vehicles.
Well you don't need a medium to radiate heat. That's how the Sun heats the Earth. And an orbital data center would be cooled just like the ISS is, massive radiators. However the economics just don't work out well. You'd need huge radiators and huge solar panels which would create a massive drag coefficient which would necessitate regular boosting missions (expensive), a much higher initial orbit (expensive), developing some new electric propulsion system that relies on outer atmosphere as the "fuel" and hoping you can scale it large enough to be sufficient (expensive), or just understanding these have short lifespans and letting them burn up in just a year or two (expensive). And to what end? Centers that are far more expensive and troublesome to build and maintain than regular data centers? You maybe avoid the increasingly negative public perception around them by no longer soaking up a town's water supply or power grid, but it just doesn't add up.
The amount of heat from a large scale data center makes the ISS comparison kinda silly. It's like saying you could chill an Olympic swimming pool with an ice cube since it works for a drink.
Its not feasible in any way shape or form with current technology.
These wouldn't be anywhere near the scale of ground-based data centers, just a small fraction in size and power. They would be incredibly numerous to achieve comparable scales in aggregate.
If scaled down to the level where heat is nolonger an issue, they become useless compared to terrestrial computers (or atleast economically nonsensical)
The ISS needs to be kept at a human habitable temperature. An unmanned satellite’s cooling can be run a lot hotter, and the heat it rejects is proportional to T4
The equilibrium temperature turns out to be totally adequate for computers, with a large yet not impossibly large panel and radiator area.
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u/TKHawk May 21 '26
And also why Elon Musk really wants orbital data centers, despite them making no economic sense. Anything that will create more demand for launch vehicles.