and free cooling courtesy of the icy death vacuum of space, is it really that bad?

Yes. You don't get cooling AND vacuum from space, the vacuum aspect prevents the majority of cooling since there's nothing to take that heat away other than IR radiation.

free cooling courtesy of the icy death vacuum of space

Cooling in space is actually really hard. The only way to get rid of heat out there is to radiate it away as black body radiation, which is a really really slow process. It’s like wrapping your computer in a really really thick blanket.

The solar power is the only thing space has going for it.

Vacuum is actually not that great for cooling, as no gas surrounding the Computer means the only way of exchanging heat with its environment is via radiation. Cooling something only via radiation is less efficient then cooling something via convection.

Of course using (probably very complicated, comically large and pretty expensive) cooling systems might be possible, but in no way as easy as "the icy death vavuum of space'" makes it seem.

You can put solar panels on earth based data centers, you could have closed loop cooling systems on earth-based data centers. The location of the data centers isn't the problem, it's the fact they're not doing any of that that's a problem.

We need to stop subsidizing them. If they have the money to launch things into orbit then they have the money to build out sustainable infrastructure here on planet Earth.