As mentioned in the article the Starcloud design requires solar arrays that are ~2x more efficient than those deployed on the ISS. Simply scaling them up introduces more drag and weight problems as do the batteries needed to suffice for the 45 minutes of darkness the satellite will receive.
Had they said "the array will be so large it'll have its own gravity." then you'd be making a valid point.
But they didn't say just "gravity", they said "gravity well".
> "First, let us simply define what a gravity well is. A gravity well is a term used metaphorically to describe the gravitational pull that a large body exerts in space."
So they weren't suggesting that it will be big enough to get past some boundary below which things don't have gravity, just that smaller things don't have enough gravity to matter.
As mentioned in the article the Starcloud design requires solar arrays that are ~2x more efficient than those deployed on the ISS. Simply scaling them up introduces more drag and weight problems as do the batteries needed to suffice for the 45 minutes of darkness the satellite will receive.
It's a Datacenter... I guess solar is what they're planning to use, but the array will be so large it'll have its own gravity well
All mass has gravity
Had they said "the array will be so large it'll have its own gravity." then you'd be making a valid point.
But they didn't say just "gravity", they said "gravity well".
> "First, let us simply define what a gravity well is. A gravity well is a term used metaphorically to describe the gravitational pull that a large body exerts in space."
- https://medium.com/intuition/what-are-gravity-wells-3c1fb6d6...
So they weren't suggesting that it will be big enough to get past some boundary below which things don't have gravity, just that smaller things don't have enough gravity to matter.
1 reply →