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>>jonbae+(OP)
Last time these folks were mentioned on HN, there was a lot of skepticism that this is really possible to do. The issue is cooling: in space, you can't rely on convection or conduction to do passive cooling, so you can only radiate away heat. However, the radiator would need to be several kilometers big to provide enough cooling, and obviously launching such a large object into space would therefore eat up any cost savings from the "free" solar power.

More discussion: >>43977188

>>Reuben+o1
This is a big thing never shown in sci-fi. For example, those huge torch ships in The Expanse would need gigantic radiators. Even if the drive were upwards of 90% efficient the waste heat would melt the engine and the rest of the ship.

Even the ISS has sizable radiators. The Shuttle had deployable radiators in the form of the bay doors if my memory serves me correctly.

Oddly enough the otherwise dumb Avatar films are among the only ones to show starships with something approaching proper radiators.

There’s no air resistance in space so radiators don’t impact your flight characteristics.

>>api+m3
Your memory serves well with respect to the Shuttle. Astronaut Mike Mullane, from his autobiography Riding Rockets:

> Next [after loading the computers with on-orbit software] we opened the payload bay doors. The inside of those doors contained radiators used to dump the heat generated by our electronics into space. If they failed to open, we’d have only a couple hours to get Discovery back on Earth before she fried her brains. But both doors swung open as planned, another milestone passed.