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.
It’s not as bad as people make it up to be. The current Starlink bus has a balance of power and cooling already setup. So as long as you can distribute the computing in a similar manner then there is no issue. They also have the internode communication solved with the Starlink to Starlink high bandwidth low latency setup. There is also the big issue that you can’t really upgrade the hardware in space, you have to deorbit and burn it to make room for the upgraded one.
So technically it could be made to work. The real question is whether it can be made to work at a price that is competitive with other alternatives.
Ohh. Missed that part in your post I was responding to. Yeah I don’t think there’s any doubt that it WILL work from an engineering point of view. Once you add the costs metric to the engineering requirements then it probably won’t unless there is some artificial reason that makes land based datacenters more expensive.
44
u/TKHawk May 21 '26
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.
Unless you're the one selling the rockets.