Comment by Catloafdev
16 days ago
The appeal is solar power efficiency gains. And yes it is a notable amount of extra mass, but not a deal-breaking amount. Latency is pretty minimal regardless of location (sub-100ms) which is not nothing but it's minor for things like serving AI inference.
Not saying I think it's the best idea, but it is theoretically feasible.
When you say it is not deal-breaking - have you looked at any math? Real world data finds we need about 6kg of radiator surface to radiate 1kW. [0] . A 100MW datacenter would need about 600,000 KG just of radiator mass. ISS was only 450,000KG and it took 13 years to assemble. Meanwhile, we're projected to launch 600X that data center capacity on earth in just the next three years.
To say that this is pure folly is an understatement. It is not folly, and it is not foolishness. It is fraud.
One of the most cited papers: https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf
Does not contain the word "nuclear". Instead its just breathless gushing about how much more efficient the solar power is.
[0] https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/epdf/10.2514/1.A35030