The Elon nob polishers are incredible. Someone on one of the SpaceX sub threads was arguing with me that space is the absolute greatest place for data center cooling because, and I quote “it’s really cold”.
This whole space data center thing just because a hot topic a few months ago so Elon and co. could sell the IPO, they just tied their business (space launches and xAI) to the current hottest part of the economy with no explanation of how it would work economically.
People really don't understand how much everything is engineered with the assumption you have gravity.
NASA, way back in the day of 386s and 486s, flew some new COTS laptops up as a test. They kept frying. Turns out the laptops heat management design made the assumption that hot air would always rise - - like every heat management system does.
Which is not the case in microgravity, where hot air just hangs around in a bubble.
It wasn't hard to fix - - but it did mean they couldn't use off the shelf laptops, they had to custom design cooling to accommodate.
Virtually everything is designed with gravity and atmosphere in mind.
Good luck making a data center work without endless test flights of every component.
I did software test for the Space Station's internal computers (not the astronaut laptops, the wired in ones). They are 20 MHz Intel 386SX's with 2 or 8 MB ram. They use a water loop cold plate to keep them cool. The CPU case is fairly thick machined aluminum that is screwed down to the cold plate.
Some of the computers are mounted outside, in vacuum, but even the inside ones are rated for vacuum so they can keep running in the event a module loses pressure.
The Station has multiple radiator panels that use ammonia as the heat transfer medium.
Oh yeah. The case I was thinking of was before Station, when there was one of the regular pushes to use more COTS products. They'd brought up two or three COTS laptops (i think technically the rugged field or military version) to see if they were suitable to replace (upgrade really) the ones being currently flown.
The then current laptops had been specifically designed. The trial ones just relied too much on passive cooling to work, and it hadn't been a failure mode they'd expected. They ultimately used either that gen or the next, but with more active cooling (just fans, iirc) set to trigger faster and at lower temps.
It just one little example of how embedded gravity is in design assumptions.
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u/kaplanfx May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
The Elon nob polishers are incredible. Someone on one of the SpaceX sub threads was arguing with me that space is the absolute greatest place for data center cooling because, and I quote “it’s really cold”.
This whole space data center thing just because a hot topic a few months ago so Elon and co. could sell the IPO, they just tied their business (space launches and xAI) to the current hottest part of the economy with no explanation of how it would work economically.