Not just cold (Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo@pipedot.org on 2014-03-13 10:36 (#HJ) Objects in orbit can also get very warm when in direct sunlight as they can't readily convect the energy gained from the sun away to a vacuum, so you'd also need to convert that heat into a form of radiation that can be disposed of. It's not an insurmountable problem, but I suspect you'd be much better off just by giving a little big more thought to locating data centres on Earth to climes more suited to passive, or at least renewable, temperature control. Re: Not just cold (Score: 1) by sleazyridr@pipedot.org on 2014-03-13 23:15 (#HX) You could probably get a refrigerative loop working from solar power. If you send up enough panels with it you can do anything, but if you're spending so much on it, you'd want to see some very obvious reasons to do it. Other than Pirate-Bay style "there's no laws in space!" kind of thing I'm not sure what would compel anyone to do it.
Re: Not just cold (Score: 1) by sleazyridr@pipedot.org on 2014-03-13 23:15 (#HX) You could probably get a refrigerative loop working from solar power. If you send up enough panels with it you can do anything, but if you're spending so much on it, you'd want to see some very obvious reasons to do it. Other than Pirate-Bay style "there's no laws in space!" kind of thing I'm not sure what would compel anyone to do it.