Why Thermodynamics Rules Future Orbital Data Centers

# Summary Orbital data centers, despite growing industry interest from companies like SpaceX, Google, and Starcloud, face significant thermodynamic challenges that make them economically unfeasible for general-purpose computing. The primary obstacle is heat dissipation—without atmosphere, spacecraft must rely solely on radiation cooling, which requires large, costly surface areas, while solar panels degrade from cosmic radiation and require complex alignment systems. According to ABI Research analysis, launching and operating a GPU in space costs at least ten times more than running the same hardware in a terrestrial data center, though niche applications like satellite data preprocessing and missile detection may eventually justify these higher costs.