cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/24946971
TL;DW:
Does It Make Sense To Put Data Centers In Space?
At some point in the future, yes.
Can They Really Cost Less To Operate?
In theory, yes.
Scott expresses concerns that current startups have not adequately addressed some of the practical challenges, such as cooling.
The first thing to happen is that any liquids (saliva, tears, blood) will start to boil in the very low pressure, but your body won’t explode like in some films. This boiling will pull heat from your body causing your nose and mouth to nearly freeze.
Another film trope is that you freeze over, but you’ll often overheat first since you can’t radiate your heat away quickly enough (depending on if you’re in sunlight or not).
The first physiological effect will be your body parts swelling up due to lack of atmosphere.
Joseph Kittinger made a jump from over 100,000 feet, and near the peak, one of his gloves malfunctioned. His hand swelled up and became useless. But it returned to normal a while later when he was back on the ground.
That guy had one hell of an interesting life: world-record altitude, world-record jump, flying in combat and being shot down over Vietnam, being a POW, being the first person to cross the Atlantic on a balloon, and making it onto a game show.
Anything within a sealed loop such as blood or brain fluid shouldn’t be boiling. Your body is pretty good at keeping that stuff inside as long as you don’t have any major cuts or something. That said, I don’t think even a minor cut suffered in the vacuum could clot or scab without oxygen.
All of the air in any of your orifices would rapidly get sucked out (including from one’s butt), and pretty much any liquids exposed to the resulting vacuum would boil. Negative pressure within the body means more room-temp boiling liquids, which then creates more air to get sucked out! It’s a feedback loop!
A space-exposed corpse would likely end up quite dehydrated for the above reason.