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
By my back of the envelope calculations, the radiators would be comparable to the solar arrays, probably somewhat smaller and not massively bigger at least.

>>Gravit+gj
Care to share them?

>>ameliu+Om
In addition to the math, you can also look at existing examples, like how large the ISS radiators need to be relative to its solar panels. Like this project, it is essentially a closed system where all power generated by the solar panels will eventually be converted to heat that needs to be dissipated.

I'm skeptical that it makes any economic sense to put a datacenter in orbit, but the focus on the radiators in the last discussion was odd - if you can make the power generation work, you can make the heat dissipation work.