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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

I just don't get it.

It's really cool that SpaceX has the ability to put stuff in orbit without it being a billion-dollar event. But I don't see any advantage to having unmaintainable tech in orbit, where all you can do is throw away an entire satellite.

What's the advantage? You can get solar power here on earth. We're not running out of land; we could put them in the middle of nowhere if we wanted, for way less than orbit.

I just can't think of any reason why we'd do this, other than "it's cool". Which, fair, but it seems like a waste.

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The advantage is that it's not in anyone's backyard. No where in the US is in-the-middle-of-nowhere enough for developers to avoid backlash. If it weren't for that, orbital data centers would not be cost effective. In the real world, they likely are, especially as the cost of launching satellites has plummeted.

It's the same boat as nuclear power plants. There's no economical reason to build small modular independent nuclear reactors. It makes much more financial sense to combine as much infrastructure as possible, even when the reaction chambers themselves are small and modular, like a CANDU reactor. Yet, getting approval for a few small things is much easier than one big thing, and getting approval is what's preventing nuclear power from being cost effective, so the most cost effective option is to spend more on infrastructure, so you can much, much less getting approval.

Well, I don't know if they're doing this, but PV can be much lighter in space. Much of the mass (and cost) of PV on Earth is structure to support it against gravity and weather. In space, a thin film PV array could be as little as a few microns thick (using for example CdTe, which absorbs light much more strongly than silicon).

Combine that with the 5-10x higher production from being in constant unfiltered sunlight, and lack of need for storage, and it could well be much cheaper to make the power in space.

How are you going to get rid on the heat?

And they won't all be in constant unfiltered sunlight some will be in the earth's shadow

By radiation. You know, like every other satellite does.

They will not be, or need not be, in orbits with substantial amounts of shadowed time.

Most satellites aren't intended to produce thousands of watts of heat.

So now we're quibbling over numbers, not saying the problem is impossible.

These satellite will need larger radiators. It's an issue satellite designers have long dealt with, so the presumption that SpaceX has somehow missed the issue in their new design is not credible.

If I had any trust in Musk-run companies then I would agree with you but I think its closer to the hyperloop than reality.

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