Not so. Look at the construction of JWST. One side is "hot", the other side is very, very cold.

I am highly skeptical about data centers in space, but radiators don't need to be unshaded. In fact, they benefit from the shade. This is also being done on the ISS.

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tempestn 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's fair. I meant they would need a clear path to open space not blocked by solar panels, but yes, a hot and cold side makes sense.

The whole concept is still insane though, fwiw.

	▲	DoctorOetker 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"I meant they would need a clear path to open space not blocked by solar panels, but yes, a hot and cold side makes sense." This is precisely why my didactic example above uses a convex shape, a pyramid. This guarantees each surface absorbs or radiates energy without having to take into account self-obscuring by satellite shape.

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RIMR 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Look at how many layers of insulation are needed for the JWST to have a hot and cold side! Again, this is not particularly simple stuff.

The JWST operates at 2kw max. That's not enough for a single H200.

AI datacenters in space are a non-starter. Anyone arguing otherwise doesn't understand basic thermodynamics.

	▲	DoctorOetker 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The goal of JWST is not to consume as much power as possible, and perform useful computations with it. A system not optimized for metric B but for metric A scores bad for metric B... great observation.

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lm28469 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Look at the construction of JWST.

A very high end desktop pulls more electricity than the whole JWST... Which is about the same as a hair dryer.

Now you need about 50x more for a rack and hundreds/thousands racks for a meaningful cluster. Shaded or not it's a shit load of radiators

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-azure-deliv...