Overheating is a massive issue outside the atmosphere. There’s no passive airflow to transfer heat through convection and there’s no air at all to utilize conduction. The only method left is radiation - the mechanism that let’s you feel the heat of a fire from the side. That’s the slowest option of them all.
Space is not cold in any sense of thermal management because space is essentially empty. Representations of people/fluids freezing when evacuated into space isn’t a good representation of actual thermal management. While there is some freezing effect, it’s because the rapid vaporizaiton of water cools the remaining water and can go below the freezing point. But, realistically, bodies don’t really freeze to an appreciable degree. Meanwhile, for everything else not containing water, there’s nothing to cool it down. In fact, of the very few particles that are flying around, they’re actually quite hot. Atoms flying for millions of years are still over 20,000 degrees.
So no. Thermal management makes orbital data centers the actual worst option.
impairedimperator@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
“easy heat dissipation” lol there is nothing easy about getting rid of heat in space.
Mubelotix@jlai.lu 4 weeks ago
You can just wait but it’s slow