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
This isn't really true, though? The ISS does it with radiators that are ~1/2 the area of its solar panels, and both should scale linearly with power?

>>dahind+E8
I don't pretend to understand the thermodynamics of all of this to do an actual calculation, but note that the ISS spends half its time in the shadow of the earth, which these satellites would not do.

>>IvyMik+Wa
The earth is actually a pretty big heat source in space. Solar radiation is a point source, so you can orient parallel to the rays and avoid it. The earth takes up about half the sky and is unavoidable. The earth also radiates infrared, the same as your radiators, so you can't reflect it. Solar light is in the visible spectrum so you can paint your radiators to be reflective in visible wavelengths but emissive in infrared.

Low satellites are still cooler in the Earth's shadow than they would be in unshadowed orbits, but higher orbits are cooler than either. Not where you'd want to put millions of datacenters though.