AI datacenters in space do not have a cooling problem

This year Elon Musk has started banging the drum about building AI datacenters in space. As the only person who owns a successful space company and a (moderately) successful AI company, this is a sensible way to boost his profile and net worth. Is it a sensible way to build datacenters? The cooling problem The first comment underneath most discussions of this always goes along these lines: “you obviously can’t build AI datacenters in space, because heat dissipation is really hard in space, and AI datacenters generate a lot of heat”. In general I am distrustful of snappy answers like these. It reminds me of the “AI datacenters obviously don’t use a lot of water, because cooling fluid circulates in a closed-loop system” argument: if it were true, there wouldn’t be a debate at all, just one side who understand the obvious point and another side who are stupid. Some arguments are like this! However, more often there’s a complicating factor that makes the snappy answer incorrect. In the…