Like the hyperloop?...

You can only cool by radiation in space. You may get more energy from the sun but how are you going to get rid of all the heat fast enough?

How hot do you think black objects in space get? Something like 10°C. Look up thermal equilibrium of an ideal black body.

In the vicinity of the Earth, they get to about the temperature of the Earth. That’s not a coincidence. Hotter if they are actively generating heat.

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.

Running a data center generates heat.

Not if you first absorb heat with your solar panels. Conservation of energy and all that.

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).

So you can have datacenters in space, you are just not allowed to use them

Not using them would also solve all issues with cosmic radiation.

But are they doing work internally that generates heat? Genuine question.

They are. But only as much heat as they get from the solar radiation that's hitting them anyway. Exactly that amount.

Except you aren't leaving that heat in place.

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?

This is a mostly a software developer forum, not an engineering forum. Expect expertise and viewpoints to match that.

So you've only looked at the very loud people talking about this, and not the hundreds of quiet people working on this?

How many smart people worked quietly on Zuck's metaverse for years? How many knew it was never going to work at some point on the line to $70 billion wasted, but thought "hey, maybe I'm wrong, and it's an interesting job that pays well"?

How many smart people worked quietly at Theranos, knowing that a drop sample from a thumb was incapable of carrying sufficient blood volume for a legitimate sample, but thought "hey, maybe someone will figure something miraculous out that violates a basic tenet of my professional experience"?

I mean, if someone wants to pay you to do a lot of very interesting R&D that will never result in an alternative to ground-based datacenters, more power to you?

It might even be useful in other circumstances. Better radiative cooling systems, hardening commercial high-end compute for space, etc etc. R&D you can feel proud of, even if your bosses are only paying you to do it to fleece rubes who think it's the next trillion dollar industry.

What if it's actually not that hard to cool something in space, and y'all just have these beliefs about the people talking about this that make you think there must be something obvious they aren't thinking about?

If it’s not that hard, then perhaps someone can just point to the simple math of how it would work.

It’s not like only idiots who know nothing about space are pointing out the cooling issue: https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri...

The problem is, that person is deeply underinformed. For instance:

"you don't lose that much power through the atmosphere"

Assuming you can point the orbiting panels at the sun and remain direct, you lose 80% of your power through the atmosphere (from angle and day/night). On the ground you lose 25% even if your panel is directly below the sun pointed exactly at it, which is never the case in many latitudes.

And of course it's not trivial to radiate heat. But it's also a fairly simple mechanical problem. You pump the heat to spread it out, and radiate it. You've already got the surface area shaded by the panels (which is more than enough, because the panels don't absorb 100% of solar radiation).

Sure, you need a lot of them. Starship V3 is probably about to get us past 100 tons of payload capacity - even if they blow up a few first.

The key people miss is that you don't have to spend money on ongoing cooling once the thing is in space. This isn't going to save money now, but the cost lines are going to cross.

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.

Nobody seem to care about reality anymore or facts. You may as well put a data center at the bottom of the ocean which would be way easier but no one is doing that either.

In the end in like 10-15 years when others land on the moon and build amazing new things maybe just maybe there will be a realization that playing scifi doesn't produce results.

Microsoft did that already and they canceled this 'idea' because it was too hard to maintain that setup XD

They tested it and decided against it because the economics didn't work out. That's how things are supposed to go. Data centers in space will work out or not. They have some engineering hurdles to get over and some bigger economic hurdles. If they succeed, great! If not, we've learned, and can turn to the next idea.

We don't need to proclaim them a success or a failure yet. I don't think they'll be sensible economically for at least several decades, but I welcome the research.

Is this the best move for the customer or the investor?

As soon as they support groups/folders I will switch. But I can't as my gitlab is all setup in many folders and sub projects.

Having to rewrite all my CI will suck but will be worth it.

Where is the case that was reported all over in Switzerland?

The Swiss nation bank and other central banks should also do something similar. They are loosing control to private foreign corporations which decide what you can and can not purchase. Not based on laws but on risk.

One of the jobs of the SNB is to enable payments. But because most people are using digital payments now they are loosing this ability and control.

If you get sanctioned by the US you loose access to all digital payment systems. In Switzerland where access to a bank account is a right written in the law you can only use one bank (Postfinance) and this bank has to limit you to basically a useless account (No wires, no credit cards etc.) because even the internal digital payment system (Twint) touches some US system.

Human mistakes in code usually have reasoning behind it. You can understand how the engineer made the mistake.

AI mistakes aren't like this, mistakes look like someone was lobotomized mid coding.

Nice but Switzerland and the EU by law require a minimum of a 2 year warranty. You can't sell a device with less.

To consumers. You can sell to businesses.

They don't seem to be trying to stop me from placing an order as a consumer.

Just put your head phones in, no one will bother you.