I thought this was going to be unviable because cooling megawatts of power passively by radiation alone is hard? That’s been overcome somehow then? The article just says “Orbital data centres can use solar power and radiate their heat to space”.
I did wonder in the past about using a large heat pump to make the heat fins much hotter, which should accelerate cooling. But just an armchair thought. Any info on how this is/will be cooled?
edit: I also wonder what happens when an SSD goes bad… do they just expect storage capacity to decrease over time, or is there some maintenance mechanism to send up fresh drives? So many questions…
I would imagine some sort of heat pump is being used to transfer the heat from the electronics to the radiators. I still wonder how they’re dealing with the heat.
Fun fact, this isn’t all that effective because of the compressor heat/inefficiency. You get some benefit, but you also introduce moving parts and complexity.
You’re absolutely right. Ive seen a few mentions of research into phase changing materials for heat transfer, but I think the technology is still in its infancy. Would be cool to see a static PCM heat exchanger. Might be possible to leverage sun exposure/shading for more favorable ∆T? Been a bit since senior Heat Transfer.
PCMs are already used but also have their limits. They’re heavy and only help if you’re consistently going through temperature swings like behind Earth’s shadow. Depending on your Beta angle, which changes as the earth revolves around the sun and your orbit precesses, you could be exposed to sun 24/7, so PCM wouldn’t help much.
I thought this was going to be unviable because cooling megawatts of power passively by radiation alone is hard? That’s been overcome somehow then? The article just says “Orbital data centres can use solar power and radiate their heat to space”.
I did wonder in the past about using a large heat pump to make the heat fins much hotter, which should accelerate cooling. But just an armchair thought. Any info on how this is/will be cooled?
edit: I also wonder what happens when an SSD goes bad… do they just expect storage capacity to decrease over time, or is there some maintenance mechanism to send up fresh drives? So many questions…
These are likely only using a few kilowatts, calling them data centers or super computers is an absurd hyperbole.
I would imagine some sort of heat pump is being used to transfer the heat from the electronics to the radiators. I still wonder how they’re dealing with the heat.
Fun fact, this isn’t all that effective because of the compressor heat/inefficiency. You get some benefit, but you also introduce moving parts and complexity.
You’re absolutely right. Ive seen a few mentions of research into phase changing materials for heat transfer, but I think the technology is still in its infancy. Would be cool to see a static PCM heat exchanger. Might be possible to leverage sun exposure/shading for more favorable ∆T? Been a bit since senior Heat Transfer.
PCMs are already used but also have their limits. They’re heavy and only help if you’re consistently going through temperature swings like behind Earth’s shadow. Depending on your Beta angle, which changes as the earth revolves around the sun and your orbit precesses, you could be exposed to sun 24/7, so PCM wouldn’t help much.
LOTS of radiators.
Seems like ocean supercomputers would be more viable…