Comment by alooPotato

3 months ago

From the post they claim 8 times more solar energy and no need for batteries because they are continuously in the sun. Presumably at some scale and some cost/kg to orbit this starts to pencil out?

12 comments

alooPotato

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ceejayoz  3 months ago

You're trading an 8x smaller low-maintenance solid-state solar field for a massive probably high-maintenance liquid-based radiator field.

  • wongarsu  3 months ago

    Can't be high maintenance if we just make it uncrewed, unserviceable and send any data center with catastrophically failed cooling to Point Nemo /s

    • TeMPOraL  3 months ago

      If it can be all mostly solid-state, then it's low-maintenace. Also design it to burn up before MTTF, like all cool space kids do these days. Not gonna be worse at Starlink unless this gets massively scaled up, which it's meant to be (ecological footprint left as an exercise to the reader).

moralestapia  3 months ago

No infrastructure, no need for security, no premises, no water.

I think it's a good idea, actually.

  • ceejayoz  3 months ago

    > No infrastructure

    A giant space station?

    > no need for security

    There will be if launch costs get low enough to make any of this feasible.

    > no premises

    Again… the space station?

    > no water

    That makes things harder, not easier.