Existing hardware might work with a lot of mass for shielding, but as others have already mentioned, the rocket equation.
Here’s a highly relevant excerpt:
computers in space are susceptible to ionizing solar and cosmic radiation. Just one high-energy particle can trigger a so-called “single event effect,” causing minor data errors that lead to cascading malfunctions, system crashes, and permanent damage
This effect is already taken into account on a lot of enterprise data systems. Bit flip errors due to radiation are monitored and corrected. Not sure how high the erorr rate could be before the system falls apart though
Radiation is another challenge for computers in space, so just expecting to stick existing hardware in a space data center won’t work as expected. Massive shielding or more specialized hardware and software will be required like what is described here: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/nasa-to-test-solution-for-radiation-tolerant-computing-in-space/
Existing hardware might work with a lot of mass for shielding, but as others have already mentioned, the rocket equation.
Here’s a highly relevant excerpt:
This effect is already taken into account on a lot of enterprise data systems. Bit flip errors due to radiation are monitored and corrected. Not sure how high the erorr rate could be before the system falls apart though
Low earth orbit is still inside the magnetic field, and keeps things within decent latency range.
Deep space data centers would be in a bigger radiation environment and also huge latency problems.
Yeah, true, maybe not as big of a problem in that case.