← Back to context

Comment by DoctorOetker

13 hours ago

please check my didactic example here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862869

"Radiators can shadow each other," this is precisely why I chose a convex shape, that was not an accident, I chose a pyramid just because its obvious that the 4 triangular sides can be kept in the shade with respect to the sun, and their area can be made arbitrarily large by increasing the height of the pyramid for a constant base. A convex shape guarantees that no part of the surface can appear in the hemispherical view of any other part of the surface.

The only size limit is technological / economical.

In practice h = 3xL where L was the square base side length, suffices to keep the temperature below 300K.

If heat conduction can't be managed with thermosiphons / heat pipes / cooling loops on the satellite, why would it be possible on earth? Think of a small scale satellite with pyramidal sats roughly h = 3L, but L could be much smaller, do you actually see any issue with heat conduction? scaling up just means placing more of the small pyramidal sats.