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Comment by cyanydeez | Hacker News Reader

Datacenters need cooling. Cooling always externalizes heat go the environment. The places you want centers are cold and water available.

Neither space or typical deaert.

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A desert isn’t necessarily hot.

It's actually very easy to cool in deserts, because low humidity makes it very easy to move heat into the ambient air. You have to contend against ambient temperatures, but that's what insulation is for. The other big things you need for datacenters are reliable power and a low probability of infrastructure-disrupting natural disasters.

Still easier to cool in the desert than in space

> Still easier to cool in the desert than in space

What is the physics and the math than let you conclude that?

Lack of medium in space so can't rely on convection or conduction there? This is really basic.

But what if you need compute for activities in space? Is the desert on earth still a good option?

Presumably that vacuum is an insulator.

You can do radiative cooling in space (you just need big radiators). You cannot do that reasonably in desert.

Taking aside you certainly can do radiative cooling in desert at night just fine - you have air, which even if hot to desert standards during the day is still by magnitudes more effective for cooling via direct heat transfer than radiating heat away in vacuum.

I did realize geothermal would be the way to do it in the desert; the ground is still typically cooler than the heat computers give off.

It's still problematic that most deserts dont haveaccess to groundwater, so bootstraping and maintenance are an issue.

You can try to put the heat underground. Maybe there is an aquifer you can use. Or maybe your desert is close to the coast!

Still easier than radiating it into space.

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