Post

Stuart L. Riley
@slriley.com

Musk starts a lot of projects, but hardly ever finishes them. I thought SpaceX was all about going to Mars and launching tiny satellites. Now, they're going to do pie-in-the-sky data centers. I wonder if any investors are starting to see a problem here.

0 reposts0 likes

poeticlicensedk.bsky.social
@poeticlicensedk.bsky.social

I don't like Elon, to put it mildly but data centers in space might actually solve a few problems: 1). High efficiency solar power (no atmosphere to filter light 2). Natural cooling (no atmosphere to trap heat) - no need for water cooling. 3). Free real estate.

poeticlicensedk.bsky.social
@poeticlicensedk.bsky.social

I need to read up on thermodynamics, conduction, etc. My perception or misconception is based on "Snowball Earth," which occurred a few times in the past (I think Permian Boundary). Without a greenhouse effect, we'd be a ball of ice, I learned in Geology.

Slartibartfast
@slarti-bartfast.bsky.social

I don't mean to say that radiational cooling is not a thing. It totally is. It's just much less efficient than conductive cooling. The denser a cooling medium is the better it can carry away heat, which is why water rather than air is used to cool devices that really generate a lot of it.

Stuart L. Riley
@slriley.com

In space, cooling is by radiation only. No convection, as you said. So the movies get it wrong when they show a person exposed to space instantly freezing solid. You'd die of suffocation long before you freeze.

knullist.bsky.social
@knullist.bsky.social

the vacuum of space unexposed to any radiation is absolute zero, ~1 kalvin, or -460°F. Since we measure in kalvin we can't measure less than 1, so relatively cold. Objects irritated by radiation from a source such as the sun in low orbit could reach 250°F or more depending on projection reflection.