Comment by xur17
3 hours ago
> Now, input power. Sunlight in orbit ~1,360 W/m², assume ~22% cell efficiency, we got 300 W/m². So each 1 MW compute, 3,300 m² of solar panel and minimum 1,200–1,500 m² of radiator.
We need > 2x more solar panels than we need radiators. Doesn't this imply radiation isn't really the limiting factor here?
Getting the energy back from the solar panel is easy via copper cables. Getting the heat back out there to the radiators is a bit harder, you needed fluids and pumps and heat exchangers which have lots of moving parts and need maintenance.
This has all been covered over and over again. It’s actually not that big of a deal
Doing it in a cost and weight effective way is still a big deal, because if it's not within ~10x the cost of ground based data centers, not enough people will use it to justify building it.
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