[eldenring]

The radiators would be lighter compared to the solar panels, and slightly smaller surface area so you can line them back to back

I don't think dissipating heat would be an issue at all. The cost of launch I think is the main bottleneck, but cooling would just be a small overhead on the cost of energy. Not a fundamental problem.

[lm28469]

If you solved this problem apply at nasa because they still haven't figured it out.

Either that or your talking out of your ass.

FYI a single modern rack consumes twice the energy of the entire ISS, in a much much much much smaller package and you'll need thousands of them. You'd need 500-1000 sqm of radiator per rack and that alone would weight several tonnes...

You'll also have to actively cool down your gigantic solar panel array

[DoctorOetker]

eldenring is slightly wrong: for reasonable temperatures the area of the radiating panels would have to be a bit more than 3 times the area of the solar panel, otherwise theres nothing wrong.

No need to apply at NASA, to the contrary, if you don't believe in Stefan Boltzmann law, feel free to apply for a Nobel prize with your favorite crank theory in physics.

[wat10000]

The pertinent thing is that it’s not an advantage. It may be doable but it’s not easier than cooling a computer in a building.

[DoctorOetker]

The distinction is that you don't need to compete for land area, that you don't cause local environmental damage by heating say a river or a lake, that you don't compete with meatbags for energy and heat dissipation rights.

Without eventually moving compute to space we are going to have compute infringe on the space, energy, heat dissipation rights of meatbags. Why welcome that?!?