I’d really love to see the economics behind this shiny idea, and I’d be even more fascinated to watch Google’s engineers explain how they’ll solve the minor inconvenience of physics. Every schoolchild learns that heat dissipates in exactly three ways: conduction, convection, and radiation. In the vacuum of space, only radiation is left—and it’s the least efficient method by a depressingly large margin. So if they don’t want to slow-roast their circuitry into orbital fondue, they’ll need radiators the size of small countries.
Which brings us to the next delightful problem: computing power and heat scale together. Want more computation? Fine. That means more hardware. More hardware means more energy consumption. And more energy consumption means a glorious avalanche of waste heat with nowhere to go except your giant, very expensive radiator-farm drifting around the Earth like a cyborg albatross.
And that’s before we even touch the economics. Even the most outrageously expensive power on this planet would look like a bargain compared to the cost of shipping servers into space just to watch them sweat.This doesn’t read like strategy. It reads like PR cosplay.