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[+] 29 points 2 months ago (38 children)
  • [+] -20 points 2 months ago* (36 children)
  • [–] 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    No you’re just confident despite your ignorance. Turning waste heat into electromagnetic radiation is not easy or efficient - 100 to 350W per square meter in current space craft. The sheer scale of radiators necessary in a orbital data centre would dwarf the footprint of the servers themselves.

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  • [+] -18 points 2 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (16 children)

    I don't know if you realize this but losing heat by radiating it away is incredibly slow and inefficient.

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  • [+] -14 points 2 months ago* (15 children)
  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (14 children)

    It does matter because it means it's not a solution.

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  • [+] -12 points 2 months ago* (13 children)

    Never said it was. But if you want a solution NASA figured it out almost 3 quarters of a century ago. If the cooling solution is the thread that makes or breaks the concept sure you could justify being this irrational I guess or you could find the next better reason to be against data centers in space. Upto you.

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  • [+] 10 points 2 months ago (11 children)
  • [+] -5 points 2 months ago* (10 children)
  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    lmao "when scientists and engineers figure out how to do it". You can't just engage in magical thinking and frame it as science, sorry.

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  • [+] -9 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    You can when it is a hypothetical to make your point.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    ...No, you can't, because then your point is "maybe one day, space magic will be real!" And that makes you sound like a lobotomite.

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  • [+] -2 points 2 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (8 children)

    Man, you can't be this pedantic and this incorrect, all at the same time.

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  • [+] -13 points 2 months ago* (7 children)

    The "there is no air in space therefore datacenters in space are a bad idea" crew is not going away. Are you even human?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Check how many square meters of copper radiators per human you need on ISS and then do the math kwh for a datacenter and you will get more tonnes of material than any material on the hole planet earth and now you understand why it's your idea that's removed from any intelligent discourse.

    Or why would I bother educating you. Go and invest in companies building data centers in space, vote for them, idc

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Black body radiation is a real, but it's an extremely inefficient way to get rid of excess heat. So you'd need huge radiators to get enough surface area.

    Add to this the fact that terrestrial data centers operate at a loss, and there's no way to run a space based one profitably.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    plus trying to dissipate heat in space, which is mostly a vacumn is a problem too.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago*

    "Black body radiation" is the physical process by which you "dissipate" (the correct word here is "radiate") heat in space.

    In space you can't just have the heat be passed from the radiator to some "substance" that fills space (like on Earth the heat is passed to air or to water that then gets released to the environment) because almost all of space is empty of matter (not exactly: there's incredibly low density stuff in it, mainly ions, but such low density means pretty much no available mass to sink the heat), so the only way for that heat to leave is the natural physical process of a warm body emitting photons merely because of its temperature (the wavelength of which depends on temperature) which is called Black Body Radiation.

    As others have pointed out, it's a way less efficient process that dissipating heat by it being passed from the radiator directly to some substance that's part of the environment (i.e. transmission).

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Please reconsider your use of the "R" word. It is not harmless. People try to say "it just means stupid" but we all know what people that word refers to. They also know this word, and know it's used in reference to them.

    They don't deserve it. My wife, for example, used to teach Shakespeare in theatrical classes in the adult day school she worked at. Her student absolutely were capable of learning that and understanding it fully.

    Yeah, language evolves over time. But just as I hope you wouldn't call a Black person "colored" because that term is currently not appreciated (even though it was the preferred in decades past), I hope you would consider removing the "R" word from your vocabulary as well.

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