zlacker

>>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
Their website pitches it as 16 square km

>>petese+63
Wouldn't a 16km² gigantic solar roof on Earth already cover the energy needs that they're pitching will be saved with this space data center?

>>dlisbo+3u
No. It would need to be larger, probably by a factor of 3 or 4, for a couple reasons.

1) The atmosphere attenuates sunlight (even when it's not cloudy)

2) The solar array in orbit can pivot to face the sun all the time.

3) While most orbits will go into earth's shadow some of the time, on average they'll be in sunlight more of the time than a typical point on the surface.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance