Comment on Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.

• Devial@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Have you seen the size of the radiators on the ISS ? And that’s just what needed for cooling of body heat for 9 people and basic computer and support equipment.

  A data center that is actively pumping out massive amounts of heat would need humongous radiator panels.

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  • XLE@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    And you can only build so many of those radiator panels before you start running into congestion problems. You don’t want them radiating onto each other.

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    • Devial@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      And those radiator panels are heavy and big, therefore enormously expensive to launch, and vulnerable to micro meteorites and other orbital debris.

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  • Fermion@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    The area of radiator needed directly corresponds to the amount of power harvested by the solar panels. It doesn’t matter what the load is. So a compute frame with the same amount of solar panels as the space station would need approximately the same radiatot area as the ISS, unless you are bringing nuclear power into the mix.

    I agree that space based datacenters are a bad idea, but the thermals really are not the gotcha people are making them out to be.

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    • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      The solar panels needed is another problem for the space data center fantasy. Once you put together all the mass over enough surface area to make it work, you would blot out the sun worldwide.

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  • fallaciousBasis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    They’re called fins. Not panels.

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    • Devial@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      What, thought your comment was so amazing you had to repost it after the first for removed for you being a dick ?

      Go touch grass, dude.

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• lordnikon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Yeah the amount of heat a data center vs a satellite your going to super heat the space in that orbit over time. It they are geostationary then its even harder as the the data center doesn’t move away from the heat.

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  • erin@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Geostationary satellites are not standing still. They’re orbiting the Earth at the same rate that it rotates “beneath” them.

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  • nabladabla@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Um, it doesn’t make the data center in orbit thing make sense, but a geostationary satellite absolute moves at high speed and does not stay in the same place in space.

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    • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      The heat would be moving at the same speed. Though, that does mean it wouldn’t be any better in any other orbit.

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      • Fermion@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Heat energy is primarily dissipated as infrared light which moves at the speed of light. There is no way for space to accumulate heat. If that were the case the entire solar system would be unlivable. The IR emitted by satellites is truly negligible in comparison to the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the sun.

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      • nabladabla@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Again, it doesn’t help the case, but just… no. The heat gets out of the spacecraft by radiating, and radiation doesn’t move in a circular orbit around Earth, it moves at speed of light outwards from where it started.

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  • Fermion@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Radiators in space work by radiating electromagnetic energy(light). Heat can only accumulate in matter, not in space, so that is definitely not one of the things we need to worry about.

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  • wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Super heat what in that space? The point is there’s nothing to transfer heat to. All you can do is radiate infra-red light.

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  • teft@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    geostationary then its even harder as the the data center doesn’t move away from the heat.

    Geostationary would leave the satellite in shadow anytime it was night time over the part of the earth since a geostationary orbit is stationary in the sky over a given point at the equator.

    That doesn’t solve any of the cooling problems just saying that you do get some shadow at geostationary orbits.

    There are other orbits that get less shadow though.

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    • wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      It’ll be in shadow at midnight, yes, but not necessarily at any other time. Geostationary orbit is at about 7x the radius of the earth.

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      As such, the period when in will actually be in shadow is only a short period directly behind the planet.

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