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0 pointsmlyle3y ago0 comments

Any use of energy in space is going to have pretty big cooling problems unless it's a fundamentally "hot" process that radiates away heat easily. Because any usage of energy in space all becomes heat.

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stevenhuang3y ago· 2 in thread

Solvable with a large enough thermal mass. And once we're able to start mining the moon or asteroids for mass to be cheap enough, heat would no longer be a problem in space: use conduction and convection to move heat away quickly, have a holding area for hot matter for radiative cooling to do its thing, then keep adding additional mass until equilibrium temperature of the system is below requirements

mlyleOP3y ago

Thermal mass doesn't change the equilibrium temperature at all. Only increasing surface area does (well, and changing its emissivity) .

stevenhuang3y ago

> have a holding area for hot matter for radiative cooling to do its thing

The implication of course is that surface area can be increased trivially by adding matter. And with a larger thermal mass, more energy will be required to heat the system to the same temperature, giving more slack in the system for radiative cooling to work.

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