Comment by marcinjachymiak
13 hours ago
The ISS is in the middle of rolling out upgrades to their panels so it’s not a great comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roll_Out_Solar_Array
> ROSA is 20 percent lighter (with a mass of 325 kg (717 lb))[3] and one-fourth the volume of rigid panel arrays with the same performance.
And that’s not the current cutting edge in solar panels either. A company can take more risks with technology choices and iterate faster (get current state-of-the-art solar to be usable in space).
The bet they’re making is on their own engineering progress, like they did with rockets, not on sticking together pieces used on the ISS today.
Now tell me how you heat dissipate all this. Not that there is a lot of air or water in space.
Not that you would want 500+ square meters just for cooling of 200KW
And, mind you, it won’t be a simple copper radiator
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/473486main_i...
Don't worry, a musk stan with a physics degree will be around shortly to inform you that 5km^2 of radiators is completely reasonable