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Lol, lmao even. (mander.xyz)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 34 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

They’re also talking about data centers in space, yet are too cheap to use anything but evaporative cooling + supplemental gas generators on Earth.

I did some math on, amongst other things, launch costs for an Earth-data center sized installation, or the area needed to radiatively cool it, and it is fun:

https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/heatrad.php

See that power of four? Areas get very large, like kilometers wide, if you want your coolant below a typical 300K (~30C), and apparently no one told Bezos that little detail.

Those space construction startups know what they’re doing. They’re selling billionaires a bridge to nowhere; and it’s working.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    They’re selling billionaires a bridge to nowhere; and it’s working.

    Look, I'm not saying it's a good thing. In fact, it would be an insanely wasteful use of resources, labor, energy, etc.

    That said, folks are all about "eat the rich" and this may very well be the closest thing to that.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    Those space construction startups know what they’re doing. They’re selling billionaires a bridge to nowhere; and it’s working.

    Guess I should have gone CHA instead of INT.
    I might have gotten some of that billionaire money to buy more RAM.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    So for a kilowatt and 300K with a poor quality radiator (0.8)

    Area = 1000/(0.8*5.670373x10^-8*30^4)

    =1000/367.4401704

    ≈2.72m^2

    So using the approximation of 1kW/m^2 of solar, you need on the order of 2.7x the area of solar for radiators

    That doesn't seem too bad, and is on par with what the ISS has. The radiators on ISS have emissivity about 0.91

    Ed. With the same quality of radiator on the ISS it's about 2.4*solar kilowatts

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