Comment Terawatt in space? My ASS! (Score 1) 126
There's no way on (or off) Jupiter's Green Earth that you could ever put a terawatt of anything in space. Every one of those watts would have to be radiated into space somehow. Can you imagine how large the heat sinks would have to be? Keep in mind that radiating heat in a vacuum is about the most inefficient way to get rid of heat that one can think of. On Earth, you can use air and water to move heat around and then dump the air or heat into the environment. In space, you only have radiation, which is basically proportional to exterior surface area and temperature. And, that exterior qualifier is important in space. Using some kind of finned radiator like we use in air or water won't work very well, since most of the heat radiated off will just be re-absorbed by other parts of the radiator. This means that in space, the most efficient (in terms of mass and heat loss) is gigantic, quite thin, highly conductive disc of metal. To distribute the heat across the entire disc, you'd probably embed a grid of heat pipes.
And, then, holy space solar panels, Batman. A terawatt is a LOT of solar panels. You could probably make the solar panels double as radiators, but that would only work if you kept them relatively cool. You're still going to also need a bunch of radiator disc. The only way I think that you get possibly get this to work is to make like a sort of triangular prism type of design. Make one side solar panels and face the sun. Make the other two sides radiators. Keep the computers in the middle, connected to the radiators through heat pipes. And then you'd need a satellite dish sticking out one end, or, preferably, both, along with a smattering of thrusters.
Considering the difficulties in dealing with the and the delay added to communications by being in space (even LEO would be bad; roughly half the time the satellites would be on the other side of the planet.), it would be much, much simpler, and cheaper, to put all of that computing power on the ground, preferably nearer to the Poles than the Equator, and preferably near a large body of water, like a lake or ocean. The Great Lakes region in the US and Canada would be great. Solar power isn't super great around The Great Lakes, but wind power is quite feasible, and the cooling potential is off the hook. I mean, there's cold water everywhere. I would think that, in Europe, the fjords of Norway and Sweden would be pretty ideal. Iceland would be pretty good too, so long as you bring in enough cross-oceanic cables from Europe and Canada. The mere fact that you wouldn't have to launch satellites into orbit along would make Iceland seem like a steal compared to space, even with the cables. Hell, even Antarctica would be cheaper and easier than space, and would have similar ping times.