Nobody (sane) is talking about putting nuclear reactors on Satellites in close Earth orbit so we don't have to worry about them generating heat. They've got solar panels that move some of the solar energy they absorb to a central location which presents problems in moving the waste heat back out so that spot doesn't get too hot. But that doesn't change the overall equilibrium temperature.
I'm not sure if you're being serious or not? Any use of power turns useful work into heat (conservation of energy and all that), which raises the temperature of the satellite, until radiative cooling can equalize within incoming heat (solar irradiation).
I didn't think of it like that. Does that mean all solar radiation is heat from when it hits a solar panel? I thought it would be something like solar -> chemical -> electrical -> heat.
You're concentrating it into a very small area of compute.
If you don't spread that heat back out, it's going to find a much higher thermal equilibrium than the solar panels themselves would find just absorbing the sunlight and radiating the energy back into space.
It's like you've pointed a magnifying glass at your compute, except with electricity, which means you can reach temperatures higher than you can with a magnifying glass.
I guess I'm curious: all the comments I see about this act as if the people proposing putting data centers in space are complete idiots. Do you believe they are complete idiots?
They're hucksters who know that adding "in space!" to a sales pitch is a free booster for tech enthusiasts.
It's the same way that Sam Altman talks about the risks of AI deciding to kill humanity: because that's dramatic and attention grabbing, and also the most unlikely outcome. Talking about it keeps us from talking about the real, ground level problems like the massive, unplanned-for disruption in jobs and education.
They just need to keep the money tap flowing, and tomorrow can worry about itself. Who's going to hold them accountable for data-centres-in-space five years from now, when they don't exist? Has Musk suffered any blowback from his hyping the Hyperloop that never materialized?
If they’re actually serious about this, they could simply address the points about cooling that numerous experts have raised. But they haven’t done that, at least not that I’ve seen. I have no idea whether they’re complete idiots, and I don’t really care. Maybe it’s idiocy, maybe it’s hubris, maybe it’s a grift, I have no idea. But until I see a compelling solution to this known problem, or a compelling suggestion as to why they’re not sharing a solution, I’ll continue to think they aren’t particularly smart or serious about this.
If you gather 1kW of power from the sun then you have to reject 1kW of heat once you are done with whatever computation you are doing. There’s a bit more heat absorbed from the environment since some sunlight strikes parts of your satellite that are not solar panels, but it’s not too bad. Starlink satellites, just to pick a relevant example, do not need a radiator at all because they stay mostly edge–on to the sun and they can radiate all the heat through their own surface area. The ISS needs big radiators because they want it to be comfortable for humans, but electronics can run significantly hotter than that.