Post #2667866

2026-05-18 13:14 UTC

Here’s a galaxy-brained take: AI datacenters in space do not have a cooling problem After discussing radiative cooling and how much launches are required (" between 100-500 Starship launches"), the conclusion is It’s still wildly impractical to build AI datacenters in space. But it’s not impossible, and it’s certainly not impossible because of the cooling, which is a relatively minor component of the total mass that would have to be launched into space. It’s not impossible to build a triumphal arch entirely in solid gold either. After a certain point, what’s economically impractical shades entirely into impossible.

Replies (2)

@YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 2026-05-18 14:56

For some reason once you start talking about space people stop thinking about it as one of many alternatives. If you want to think about industrializing space, simply being possible isn’t enough. The unique challenges of operating in orbit (of which cooling is only the most obvious among a great many problems) need to be addressable efficiently enough that sending it up still makes more sense than building it on the ground. Microsoft’s experiments with underwater data centers serve as a powerful parallel since it has many of the same challenges but is still significantly cheaper. If it were economical to put a data center in orbit it would be even more economical to put it in an underwater container, so if we aren’t doing the latter we would need a hell of a good reason to do the former. See also the economic challenges of living on Mars, the moon, or even LEO compared to Antarctica or ocean platforms.

Open ##2667865
@CinnasVerses@awful.systems 2026-05-18 20:27

The ISS already has issues with structural fatigue which seem to be worsened by thermal expansion. Having one side of your station red hot and another at room temperature is a big temperature differential and what faces the sun and heats up on one side of the orbit will be in shadow and cooling on the other side. And the bigger you make a physical system, the worse problems get. I miss when I could cheer SpaceX launches on an iMac.

Open ##2686546