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by tmallen 4602 days ago
There's a long way to go before building permanent structures on the Moon is a possibility (meteoroid detection/destruction, understanding seismic activity, etc.), but its far side would be a great place for building data centers.
2 comments
pmjordan 4602 days ago
Are you implying that the far side of the moon receives no sunlight? It does, just as much as anywhere else on the moon. Note also that communication with earth would be tricky (aside from the 3 second ping time you'd already get due to the distance)
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ndonnellan 4602 days ago
Space is a terrible heat transfer fluid.
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brudgers 4602 days ago
But a top notch heat sink.
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gcr 4602 days ago
Not really. (Disclaimer: I'm not an expert at all, much of what I say is wrong)

Consider your CPU's heat sink. The CPU gets hot, but it can transfer that heat to your metallic heat sink (thermal conduction?), which in turn can dissipate that heat to its surrounding air (thermal convection?).

If you're in space, the only way to get rid of that heat is by radiating it as light (radiation; the same way a metal glows white hot) but that's much less efficient. You can't transfer it to another mass because there isn't other mass in a vaccuum.

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sigstoat 4602 days ago
i think there is a bit of a terminology issue.

to give brudgers as much credit as possible, space is a pretty good heat sink, in that it can absorb all of the heat you can ever produce, without changing temperature. (and since heat transfer is proportional to temperature difference, your transfer rate will never drop because of it.)

but it is terrible for heat transfer.

the metal widgets we stick onto our CPUs aren't really heat sinks, they're for reducing the thermal resistance between the CPU body and the atmosphere, which is the "final" destination for the heat.

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alan-crowe 4602 days ago
Florence explains this to Helix here http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff900/fv00863.htm
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maxerickson 4602 days ago
If you have enough space (err, room) for your radiator, space is a perfect heat sink.
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rwmj 4602 days ago
One of the issues with the LM was getting rid of heat from the electronics. The Aft Equipment Bay was mounted external to the LM[1], and had to use active cooling (some sort of sublimation system according to [2]).

[1] http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/LM04_Lunar_Module_ppLV1-17.pdf

[2] http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/1972001...

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