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sheepscreekyesterday at 10:08 PM5 repliesview on HN

What’s there not to like? Superconductors. Free electricity. No cooling necessary.

Put those three together and maybe it’s possible to push physics to its limits. Faster networking, maybe 4x-5x capacity per unit compared to earth. Servicing is a pain, might be cheaper to just replace the hardware when a node goes bad.

But it mainly makes sense to those who have the capability and can do it cheaply (compared to the rest). There’s only one company that I can think of and that is SpaceX. They are closing in on (or passed) 8,000 satellites. Vertical integration means their cost-base will always be less than any competitor.


Replies

jasonpeacockyesterday at 10:12 PM

> No cooling necessary.

This is false, it's hard to cool things in space. Space (vacuum) is a very good insulator.

3 are ways to cool things (lose energy):

  - Conduction
  - Convection
  - Radiation
In space, only radiation works, and it's the least efficient of those 3 options.
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pgalvinyesterday at 10:11 PM

Do you mean to suggest that computer hardware does not need to be cooled when it is in space? Or that it is trivial and easier to do this in space compared to on Earth? I don’t understand either claim, if so.

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DougN7yesterday at 10:11 PM

Why is there no cooling necessary?

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browningstreetyesterday at 10:19 PM

Do you know the lifespan of those satellites? Do you know how many of those fall out (sorry, de-orbited) of space every year?

Do you know the cost of sending up a payload of them?

Do you know how much $$ you need to extract from those payloads to make the cost of sending them up make sense?

Do you know how much they've lied about Starlink revenue and subscription counts?

tenuousemphasisyesterday at 10:15 PM

Your exuberance for this topic is only matched by your lack of understanding about it.