this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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Via radiation into space. All you need is a radiator, the weight of a battleship (or worse). Yes, the idea is crazy.
Around or less than twice the size of the ISS radiator.
That gives you a heat rejection capacity of less than 140 kW (mind you, that is total heat rejection, incl. heat from the sun, support systems etc., only a part of that can be used to cool servers) So you settle for laughably low compute to keep radiator size somewhat reasonable, yet still massive and heavy.
The ISS is rated for 84kw but is run max at 70kw, probably for margin of error and whatnot since its for human saftey, which these will not be. They can also ~~probably~~ run hotter, (edit reducing the size).
The compute is 125kw avg per dish. 150 peak.
You do need margins not just for humans.
Building something the size of an (unmanned) space station for a single server rack, yes, it makes no sense. The energy needed to lift all that stuff into orbit, the comically inefficient cooling and never mind the issues of impact damage and radiation and inability to do any service (without huge effort) if things go wrong, all make this a pretty irrational idea.
Just put that server rack in Iceland with geothermal power and closed loop heat pump. But then the tech oligarchs would have to comply with laws and that is probably the reason they want it up in space. There surely is no technical reason for it.
Data / hardware sovereignty is a real thing, you can't put all your data centers in another county, but building them in Texas vs Vermont/Alaska or elsewhere is stupid.