does in orbit around the moon count?

@Dulaman No, "on the moon" does not include any orbit. This is in contrast to the majority of space data center plans that are Earth orbital so far. Prediction is they will pivot to lunar when they realize how much more reasonable that is than orbital.

@VincentCate I think lunar has lots of benefits, but things like pumping heat into the lunar regolith would take massive plumbing systems to be effective. And even then it would probably only work for a short while. The regolith would heat up over time and stop being a good thermal sink.

@Dulaman and if there's lots of activity on the moon, that means loads of moon dust getting sprayed in all directions. Since there's no atmosphere to slow it down it gets everywhere, including all over your solar panels

like maybe there's a way of storing that excess heat during the day and then radiating it away during the night? But there's no obvious technology solution that can manage that for GW datacenters running for 15 days straight

maybe one of the craters that are in permanent darkness? And then have solar panels outside of the crater to power it? Something like that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanently_shadowed_crater

I guess you could also turn some craters into permanently shadowed craters by moving regolith around

build a gpu cluster in this big boi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlanger_(crater)

but then the polar regions are also less viable for solar power so...

@Dulaman Your cooling radiator will lay on top of the ground in a permanently dark crater near one of the poles. It is not trying to heat up the regolith. Really the heat has to radiate out into space. But the dark crater means there is less heat getting to the radiator from other sources, so it is easier for the radiator to get rid of heat. Because we will make the pipes and fins of the radiator from Aluminum made on the moon and not launched from Earth you can deal with the scale of the radiator needed.