Comment by foobarian
2 months ago
I think it is an advantage, the question is just how big, and assume we look only at ongoing operation cost.
- Earth temperatures are variable, and radiation only works at night
- The required radiator area is much smaller for the space installation
- The engineering is simple: CPU -> cooler -> liquid -> pipe -> radiator. We're assuming no constraint on capex so we can omit heat pumps
Radiators on earth mainly do it to air, there's no air in space.
A typical CPU heatsink dissipates 10-30% of heat through radiation, and the rest through convection. In space you're in a vacuum so you can't disipated heat through convection.
You need to rework your physical equipment quite substantially to make up for the fact you can't shed 70-90% of the heat in the same manner as you can down here on Earth