THE VIDEO SHELF · space datacenter cooling
Is It Really Impossible To Cool A Datacenter In Space?
Scott Manley explains the thermal balance of spacecraft and how a satellite could be configured to radiate away the heat from datacenter-scale computing in space. His rough numbers suggest it is feasible.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN points to it as a convincing energy-budget analysis in debates over space datacenters, while debating its assumptions.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Scott Manley
- Topic
- space datacenter cooling
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- intermediate
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 7
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2026–2026
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
It’s very easy to overestimate the difficulty of cooling things in space, unless you actually run the numbers. So please follow along as Scott Manley runs the numbers: < [VIDEO] >. Basically a Starlink v3 satellite has an estimated power budget of 20kW. Add in …
db48x on Hacker News · 2026-05
In Starship V3I went in wanting this to look real bad. But the Scott Manley video alas has sort of convinced me this is pretty feasible, that the energy budget is quite doable. [VIDEO] I do think this is a pretty generous estimate he ends up at. …
jauntywundrkind on Hacker News · 2026-06
In Cooling in Space
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.