Comment by divbzero
9 months ago
> So, there you have it: "all you have to do" is deploy a few hectares of radiators in space, combined with heat pumps that can dissipate gigawatts of thermal load…
Starcloud’s whitepaper suggests a 4 km × 4 km radiator. For comparison, the James Web Space Telescope has a sunshield measuring 21 m × 14 m and the International Space Station measures 109 m × 73 m.
James Webb is a trainwreck. It took 20 years of delays to launch it.
It _was_ a trainwreck. Now it’s in space making great discoveries.
Wait until you hear how long this project winds up taking.
Webb took a long time because this stuff is very, very challenging. One of its primary engineering challenges was… cooling!
To be fair, they wanted it very cold indeed