Comment by adastra22
19 hours ago
> sure space is cold
Even this isn't true. It's ~120 degC in daylight in LEO. It only gets cold in the shade, but a solar powered data center is pretty useless in the shade.
19 hours ago
> sure space is cold
Even this isn't true. It's ~120 degC in daylight in LEO. It only gets cold in the shade, but a solar powered data center is pretty useless in the shade.
The solar labels are in the sun. Behind them they are in the shade.
In close proximity, and connected to metal structures radiating & conducting heat at 120 degrees. You still have to expel that heat somehow, and route it around the spacecraft core.
I think stopping the heat conductivity is a solved problem - space telescopes manage to do this. But all in all, cooling in space remains a very big challenge.
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The energy collected from the solar panels must be converted into heat in the AI chips. It's really like putting the AI chips directly into the sun, just with extra steps. Sunlight gets transformed into electricity which gets transformed into heat in the chips.
They actually need the entirety of the backside of the panels to cool them - if not they would literally burn out from the accumulated heat from being exposed to the sun.