3 ms·

How would cooling work in space based computing? To a layman like me it seems like a significant hurdle to overcome.

• Pingk 4mo ago
  It really doesn't. You're purely relying on radiation fins to carry heat away, which are incredibly inefficient. > The radiator surface area problem also scales uncomfortably. At 838 watts per square meter, rejecting 1 megawatt of waste heat requires roughly 1,200 square meters of radiator. Deploying that much surface area on a satellite is a structural engineering challenge that gets harder with every order of magnitude. The ISS solar arrays span about 2,500 square meters total. So even a 2MW data centre in space requires a cooling array rivalling the international space station. Starcloud launched a single H100 in November and they were unable to run it 24/7 due to heat buildup. Even with novel solutions to make heat transfer to the fins more efficient, like phase-change liquids, the limiting factor is that the vacuum of space is a tremendous insulator. https://thecoolingreport.com/intel/starcloud-orbital-data-center-radiative-cooling.html https://thecoolingreport.com/intel/starcloud-orbital-data-ce... https://satnews.com/2026/03/17/the-physics-wall-orbiting-data-centers-face-a-massive-cooling-challenge/ https://satnews.com/2026/03/17/the-physics-wall-orbiting-dat...