Comment by wat10000
6 hours ago
Well no, it’s because conduction/convection into a fluid is so much more effective.
Just look at a car. Maybe half a square meter of “radiator” is enough to dissipate hundreds of kW of heat, because it can dump it into a convenient mass of fluid. That’s way more heat than the ISS’s radiators handle, and three orders of magnitude less area.
Or do a simple experiment at home. Light a match. Hold your finger near it. Then put your finger in the flame. How much faster did the heat transfer when you made contact? Enough to go from feeling mildly warm to causing injury.
Yes, it's so much more effective, ... at sea level Earthly conditions.
What’s more effective: conduction/convection on the ground, or radiation in space?
but thats what you don't get: conduction / convection on the ground is ultimately still radiation to space: you heat up our rivers, soils, atmosphere and the heat is eventually shed... by thermal radiation.
its not exactly good advertisement for conductive or convective heat transfer if its really employing thermal radiation under the hood!
but do you want big tech to shit where you eat? or do you want them to go to the bathroom upstairs?
At some point I'm thinking the large resistance to the idea I am seeing in a forum populated with programmers is the salivation-inducing idea that all that datacenter hardware will eventually get sold for less and less, but if we launch them to space there won't be any cheap devalued datacenter hardware to put in their man-caves.
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