Figuring out how to radiate a lot of waste heat into a vacuum is fighting physics. Ordinarily we use a void on earth as a very effective _insulator_ to keep our hot drinks hot.
Radiators should work pretty well, and large solar panels can do double duty as radiators.
Also, curiously, newer GPUs are developed to require significantly less cooling than previous generations. Perhaps not so coincidentally?
The idea itself was proven by NASA with the DC-X but the project was canceled due to funding. Now instead of having NASA run it we SpaceX pay more than we'd ever have paid NASA for the same thing.
DC-X test flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE7XJ5HYQW4
It's awesome that Falcon 9 exists and it is great technology but this guy really isn't the one anyone should want in charge of it.
https://healthpolicy-watch.news/the-human-cost-one-year-afte...
This doesn’t pass the smell test given that the cost of launch with spacex is lower than it ever was under ULA.
NASA has never been about cheap launches, just novel technology. Look at the costs of Saturn and SLS to see what happens when they do launch.
That makes radiating a much more practical approach to cooling it.
The great thing about your argument is that it can be used in any circumstance!
Cooling car batteries, nope can't possibly work! Thermodynamics!
Refrigerator, are you crazy? You're fighting thermodynamics!
Heat pump! Haah thermodynamics got you.
Right now only upsides an expensive satellite acting as a server node would be physical security and avoiding various local environmental laws and effects
You are missing some pretty important upsides.
Lower latency is a major one. And not having to buy land and water to power/cool it. Both are fairly limited as far as resources go, and gets exponentially expensive with competition.
The major downside is, of course, cost. In my opinion, this has never really stopped humans from building and scaling up things until the economies of scale work out.
> connect to other satellites and earth
If only there was a large number of satellites in low earth orbit and a company with expertise building these ;)
These satellites will be in a sun-synchronous orbit, so only close to any given location on Earth for a fraction of the day.
It's interesting that you bring that up as a benfit. If waterless cooling (i.e. closed cooling system) works in space, wouldn't it work even better on Earth?
Your examples prove our case. You just must not understand how they work
There’s also fairly clear distinction with how insane Elons plan has become since the first plans he laid for Tesla and SpaceX and the plans he has now. He has clearly become a megalomaniac.
Funnily enough, some of the things people said about Tesla is coming true, because Elon simply got bored of making cars. It’s now plausible that Tesla may die as a car company which I would not have imagined a few years ago. They’re arguably not even winning the self driving and robotics race.
Currently SpaceX have managed to land the booster only, not the rocket itself, if you are thinking about Starship. And reusability of said rocket is also missing (collecting blown up pieces from the bottom of the ocean doesn't count!).
Yes, running hotter will cause more energy to be radiated.
but
These parts are not at all designed to radiate heat - just look at the surface area of the package with respect to the amount of power they consume.
It is our money and we're not obligated to give it away if we think it's needed for something else. I'd note though, that in terms of the budget, USAID was like change in the couch cushions and nothing else in the world was even close in terms of lives saved per dollar. Why the man tasked with saving the government trillions of dollars went there at all was nonsensical to begin with.
Nevertheless, it is fully within our rights to pull back aid if we (collectively) decide it's best thing to do. But the only legal way to do that is through the democratic process. Elected can legislators take up the issue, have their debates, and vote.
If congress had canceled these programs through the democratic process, there almost certainly would've been a gradual draw down. Notice and time would be given for other organizations to step in and provide continuity where they could.
And since our aid programs had been so reliable and trusted, in many cases they became a logistics backbone for all sorts of other aid programs and charities. Shutting it all down so abruptly caused widespread disruption far beyond own aid programs. Food rotting in warehouses as people starved. Medications sitting in warehouses while people who needed them urgently died. The absolute waste of life and resources caused by the sudden disruption of the aid is a true atrocity.
Neither Elon or Trump had legal authority to unilaterally destroy those programs outside of the democratic process the way they did, so they are most directly morally responsible for the resulting death.
To add insult-to-injury, Elon was all over twitter justifying all of it with utterly deranged, insane conspiracy theories. He was either lying cynically or is so far gone mentally that he believed them. I'm not sure which is worse.
Hmm, surely the radiator can run at arbitrary temperatures w.r.t. the objects being cooled? I'm assuming heat pump etc is already part of the design.