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https://petertodd.org/2024/keeping-it-cool-mining-bitcoin-in-space

A physics based look at Bitcoin mining in space. tl;dr: keeping miners cool in space with just radiative cooling is practical, and latency isn't a big deal.

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

Your analysis on heat spreading suggests that it's possible to build a passively cooled solar powered mining rig on Earth too. Wouldn't that be strictly cheaper since you save the launch cost?

Or does the atmosphere add too much insulation?

I guess another concern is that on the surface you only get sunlight half of the day. Takes twice as long to earn back the investment. Though the equipment might last longer.

How well can 2 to 3 nanometer chips survive space? You'd definitely want a way to bypass individual chips, but that seems easy enough.

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Discussion

Peter Todd 1y ago

Solar isn't necessarily cheaper on earth. Solar panels dedicate a lot of mass on structure necessary to resist weather, as well as gravity. Space miners could potentially be _much_ thinner. Possibly even a very thin film that is simply unrolled in space and tensioned via rotation. Whether or not this is an economical advantage depends on how cheap we make ASIC manufacturing.

That said, as I've said before I strongly suspect we'll eventually see ASICS integrated into solar panels too, with passive cooling. We just need the right economies of scale to make the up front development costs worth it.

Re: 2-3 nanometer chips surviving in space, we're just beginning to have significant commercial demand for relatively high end electronics in space with Starlink. So who knows what we'll come up in the future. I deliberately didn't ask questions like that in my article as it's a matter of in-depth engineering, not fundamental physical constraints.