Comment by eldenring
12 hours ago
> The panels suffer radiation damage they don't suffer on Earth.
I don't think this is true, Starlink satellites have an orbital lifetime of 5-7 years, and GPUs themselves are much more sensitive than solar panels for rad damage. I'd guess the limiting factor is GPU lifetime, so as long as your energy savings outpace the slightly faster gpu depreciation (maybe from 5 -> 3 years) plus cost of launch, it would be economical.
I've said this elsewhere, but based on my envelope math, the cost of launch is the main bottleneck and I think considerably more difficult to solve than any of the other negatives. Even shielding from radiation is a weight issue. Unfortunately all the comments here on HN are focused on the wrong, irrelevant issues like talking about convection in space.
> I don't think this is true, Starlink satellites have an orbital lifetime of 5-7 years,
That's better than I thought, but still means their PV is only lasting order-of 20% of their ground lifespans, so the integrated lifetime energy output per unit mass of PV isn't meaningfully improved by locating them in space, even if they were launched by an efficient electromagnetic system rather than by a rocket.