zlacker

>>g-mork+(OP)
Either this is a straight up con, or Musk found a glitch in physics. It's extremely difficult to keep things cold in space.

>>alangi+u6
what makes you believe this?

radiators can be made as long as desirable within the shade of the solar panels, hence the designer can pracitically set arbitrarily low temperatures above the background temperature of the universe.

>>Doctor+Ca
these same comments pop up every time someone brings up satellite data-centers where people just assume the only way of dissipating heat is through convection with the environment.

>>eldenr+Ub
No, we just "assume" (i.e. know) that radiation in a vacuum is a really bad way of dissipating heat, to the point that we use vacuum as a very effective insulator on earth.

Yes, you can overcome this with enough radiator area. Which costs money, and adds weight and space, which costs more money.

Nobody is saying the idea of data centers in space is impossible. It's obviously very possible. But it doesn't make even the slightest bit of economic sense. Everything gets way, way harder and there's no upside.

>>wat100+Md
Additional radiator area means bigger spacecraft, implies more challenge with attitude control. Lower down you get more drag so you use propellant to keep yourself up, higher up you have more debris and the large area means you need to frequently manoeuvre to avoid collisions. Making things bigger in space is not trivial! You can't just deploy arbitrarily large panels and expect everything to be fine.

>>verzal+8g
space is vast

they could go near a Lagrange point

there are so many options

heavier boats are also slower to accelerate or decelerate compared to smaller boats, does this mean we should ban container ships? having special orbits for megastructure lanes would seem a reasonable approach.