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> Maintenance is performed locally. […] By the time this becomes relevant to planetary energy there are multiple space stations with permanent staff. It seems
by codethief 2y ago
> Maintenance is performed locally. […] By the time this becomes relevant to planetary energy there are multiple space stations with permanent staff.
It seems whether or not you can keep maintenance staff close-by would depend on the temperatures of those server farms. Yes, the regime in which this could work might be fairly large but remember that we're talking about exponential growth of energy production here and the whole reason behind moving the power plants (and server farms) to deep space was that they were emitting enough heat to affect planet-level thermodynamics.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoBut that still doesn't affect energy density. If you want twice as many server farms then you build twice as many space stations in twice the volume of space and the energy density remains constant.
- codethief 2y ago> But that still doesn't affect energy density. But it does? I think you're confusing energy density with power density. The former is an integral over time and would be monotically increasing with time since nuclear fusion would allow us to basically pull energy out of of thin (ok, maybe not so thin) air.