zlacker

>>lawren+(OP)
Nice, should also solve global warming when the radiators they propose to dissipate a GW of waste heat blot out the sun.

>>kristj+Q2
> radiating towards deep space

Literally ctrl-f heat in the pdf.

>>Feepin+O3
Yeah another poster did the back of the napkin math to find the area these radiators would have to have: twice the size of the pentagon. Launch cost: 30 billions.

This kind of pdf is what you get when your genius startup doesn't have a single engineer with half a brain and everybody does enough coke to believe you can beat physics with sheer enthusiasm.

That, or it is calculated fraud.

>>atoav+f6
Note: In my napkin math I forgot they could maybe use both the front and the back of the panel so it would be “merely” the area of one pentagon. I’ve edited that.

But the launch cost would remain the same as my original estimate because it was based on weight per “effective radiator area” of current best-practice space materials.

>>reaper+t7
Yeah there are clearly gains to be made by clever use of geometries etc, but the gist of your math is still sound.

Thesw kind of calculations are ballpark stuff. Even if they are a magnitude better these are still uneconomical numbers.