For basically any “space datacenter” scenario, imagine putting that same thing in a vast desert instead. You’ll find it’s easier and an order of magnitude cheaper.
If it is a double-sided radiator panel, the physical panel area could be about half:
2,530 m² of panel, about 50 m × 50 m, assuming both sides radiate effectively.
Also temperature matters enormously so
At emissivity 0.85:
Radiator temp
Area for 100 MW
300 K
~256,000 m²
500 K
~33,200 m²
800 K
~5,100 m²
So the answer is about 5,000 m² (lol this is like “a football field” on each side) at 800 K, but balloons to absurd levels like hundreds of thousands of m² if you are trying to dump room-temperature waste heat which there would be a significant amount of. That is for a single small data center at current power needs. In the US alone data centers use 176 TWh (https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48646), so there is no chance we are going to be migrating a significant portion of it into space.
It’s possible, but not economical.
For basically any “space datacenter” scenario, imagine putting that same thing in a vast desert instead. You’ll find it’s easier and an order of magnitude cheaper.
Yeah, maybe not impossible, but I mean extremely unlikely. I found a thread on reddit that had examples and a spreadsheet https://www.reddit.com/r/IsaacArthur/comments/11kp7s4/how_large_of_a_heatradiator_would_a_spacecraft/
To run a data center in space you would need some kind of reactor producing around 100 MW. If rejecting 100 MW at 800 K
A= 100,000,000 / 0.85×5.670374419e−8×800
The number is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant (σ) https://physics.knox.edu/OnlineHW/zTest-PhysicalConstants.html
A≈5,065 m²
So roughly:
5,100 m² of radiating surface
That is a square about:
√(5065) ≈71 m per side
If it is a double-sided radiator panel, the physical panel area could be about half:
2,530 m² of panel, about 50 m × 50 m, assuming both sides radiate effectively.
Also temperature matters enormously so
At emissivity 0.85:
So the answer is about 5,000 m² (lol this is like “a football field” on each side) at 800 K, but balloons to absurd levels like hundreds of thousands of m² if you are trying to dump room-temperature waste heat which there would be a significant amount of. That is for a single small data center at current power needs. In the US alone data centers use 176 TWh (https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48646), so there is no chance we are going to be migrating a significant portion of it into space.