Admittedly it is not my field, but back of the envelope calculations in a sun synchronous orbit with the radiators pointed towards deep space seem pretty plausible with about 1.3 to 1.7 ratio of solar area to radiator area.
replyLike, it's not "great" but if you're not flying around the sun every 72 minutes or whatever and you can keep your panels sun on and radiate into deep space, the numbers aren't bananas.
Also, you have to iradiate towards a space area which is not occupied by Earth. Ideally you go to Lagrange points with the datacenter but not around the earth.
replyIs that ratio just for collecting the sun's energy. Or does it include using it?
replyBut you need a lot of fluid or gas to move the heat in that radiator system, whereas solar has the benefit of extremely efficiently moving power around at great distances through wiring or integrated bus bars.
replyAnd you need to get the heat away from the central point to the extremities of the radiator as much as possible. So you can maximize how much energy can be radiated away.
Seems like the weight of the system would be an issue with whatever gas or liquid you used to fill those radiators, but maybe I'm wrong...
Scott Marley’s got a video on it. The numbers work out.
replyhttps://youtu.be/FlQYU3m1e80
reply"Is It Really Impossible To Cool A Datacenter In Space?" - Scott Manley
tl;dr -> not impossible.
Yeah, that was kind of a surprise. I always thought heat would be the big show stopper, but apparently not.
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