alt Hacker NewsScott Manley had a really good video on it that more or less confirmed my "bar napkin approximations" when people first started talking about this stuff. I think it's this one?
https://youtu.be/DCto6UkBJoI?si=opcoaBEqKmw4LCrF
Anyway, I think sun synchronous orbit (basically slightly off from polar) and pointing the solar panels toward the sun and the radiator away... It's not as far fetched as people would have you believe.
Replies
JumpCrisscross • last Saturday at 11:12 PM
Yup. It’s weirdly closer than I would have thought before sitting down with pen and paper.
gamblor956 • last Sunday at 4:22 AM
That's like saying that controlled fusion is a napkin problem.
The issue has always been the engineering. Programmers tend to be extremely bad at estimating he complexity of real world problems.
Did we watch the same video? My takeaway from Manley is that it is something that can pencil out as a physics problem with a very carefully selected orbit
But as an engineering problem it's quite another thing. For example he talks about how far you have to pump the ammonia, and then you either need a very large amount of ammonia, or you have to pump a smaller amount of ammonia very fast through kilometers of plumbing.
Of course there are highly theoretical ideas like making an atmosphere of coolant around the satellite or something but he left that stuff on the sci fi category.