What about on the Moon? My understanding is that heat is the killer. There you could sink pipes into the surface and use that as a heat sink. There are “peaks of eternal light” near the poles where you could get 24/7 solar power.

Latency becomes high but you send large batches of work.

Probably not at all economical compared to anywhere on Earth but the physics work better than orbit where you need giant heat sinks.

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perihelions 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not a viable heat sink because it's a thermal insulator that doesn't support transport of heat. The thermal conductivity of lunar regolith is lower than rock-wool insulation,

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9646997/ ("Thermophysical properties of the regolith on the lunar far side revealed by the in situ temperature probing of the Chang’E-4 mission" (2022))

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_42...

(Imagine, for entertainment purposes, what would happen if you wrapped a running server rack in a giant ball of rock-wool insulation, 50 meters in radius).

Only way to dissipate large amounts of heat on the moon is with sky-facing radiators.

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morcus 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Moon doesn't have a magnetic field, though, so the second half of the article discussing difficulties due to radiation would still apply, right?

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adamwong246 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We will need to develop very robust, space-worthy electronics eventually. We can't rely on natural magnetic fields forever.

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api 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not if you bury it in regolith. That’s an idea for a Lunar base too. The design is called “Hobbit holes.” Bury the occupied structures in piles of basically any local mass you can bury them in.

It’s another huge problem for orbit though. Shielding would add a ton of mass and destroy the economics.

	▲	nradov 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Lunar regolith is so abrasive that digging holes or tunnels isn't going to be cost effective. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20250000687

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marcosdumay 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You'd have most of the problems of building in space, an abrasive quasi-atmosphere of dust, half a month of darkness every month, and not as good of a heat sink as the Earth's atmosphere.

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hackeraccount 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I had this same thought and mentioned it on an ArsTechnica forum. There was reply that suggested that lunar regolith wouldn't be a good heat sink and a bit of googling makes me think this is probably true.

That said anything has to be better then almost literally nothing so I'm still holding out for datacenters on the moon.