As I understand it, the problem is cooling. There isn't any medium to take away the heat, so the only option is to slowly radiate it away.

Anyone who has googled just once to ask if datacenters in space make any sense, has found out they don't because they can't get rid of heat.

That leaves only two kinds of people left who are still talking excitedly about datacenters in space: The uninformed and the grifters.

	▲	redox99 29 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The area you need in radiators is only half the area you need in solar panels. So it's definitely not a deal breaker. Its still very dumb because of economics, logistics, serviceability and more.
	▲	dzhiurgis 26 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Scott Manley, I’d say one of the top pop space youtubers say otherwise. If anything it’s easier in space. On earth most complexity in datacenter is cooling. In space you just radiate it away. And SpaceX already proven they can launch sort of datacenters 10k times by launching Starlink (up to 20KW of solar each IIRC). FWIW Musk should support Bernie Sanders more. Putting moratoriums on datacenters would make space based ones far more economical.