this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

https://youtu.be/XS5rbLBflaI

Capitalism has a whole lot of cult-like qualities. The space stuff just shows we are end game.

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

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

That's just wealth redistribution /s

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

"Scam the rich," perhaps?

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 3 points 1 week 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.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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