this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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Except right now, superconductors only work at very low temperatures, and keeping things at low temps in space requires energy.
Technically, it needs insulation and a way to radiate heat. I read a while back that the superconductors used in space are often wrapped in several concentric shells to avoid being exposed directly to the sun and other onboard heat sources.
No, keeping parts of things cold in space is easy. As long as something isn't being hit by direct solar radiation then the default temperature is negative several hundred degrees
Technically yes, due to the extreme distances between particles in space we'd average a volume and say "negative temperature!".
However.
Those individual particles are shooting at extreme speed and momentum, so they're individually very hot.
And due to the lack of particles bouncing around in a given volume of space, you can't use conduction/convection (aka, here fellow particles, take some of my energy). Instead you can only use radiative cooling, which is crazy inefficient. For example, the ISS has 75KW of cooling across 1000 square meters.
But once it's cool it stays cool. Anything behind a radiation shield will stay cool forever
Until it turns on. Then boom, waste heat.
Though in all fairness that isn't much of a problem for a superconductor - no resistance, no waste heat when power runs through it.
The main problem would be the waste heat from the rest of the system rather than the superconductor itself, so maintaining a superconductor cool is more a thermal insulation problem and the near vacuum of space actually helps in doing it because it removes the heat transmission from the hotter parts of the system to the superconductor via the environment (though, of course, it still happens via the solid parts in contact with it, so the thermal insulation is needed there)
No