this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
521 points (98.3% liked)
Technology
83098 readers
2741 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Tell me you don't know how radiators actually work without telling me. They dissipate heat via convection through the air surrounding them or gasses in general. What does space lack a significant amount of?
Yeah so there is some confusion here. The are radiators on cars or in houses, but those are more accurately heat exchangers. Then there are things like heat lamps, which are really IR radiators that convert electricity to infrared light that feels hot.
Most of the heat you feel at a camp fire is radiant from the flame, unless you are down wind and feeling some convective heat, but most of that heat goes straight up with the smoke.
There's a difference certainly but do you think the people who seem to be floating this idea know the difference?
Hard to say, but they’ve been using ~~resistive~~ radiative cooling In space a long time.
Also a tech ingredients made a neat video about building one and radiating heat out into space from the ground. It was cool to see what happened when it was cloudy and stopped working.
Radiative cooling is all you got in space.
Radiators dissipate heat through...wait for it...
Radiation.
Yes, but radiating heat purely through IRR is much less efficient than radiating it through convection. While a radiator is the answer, it's going to be horribly inefficient. Which is why I support them spending however many billions of dollars to put an AI datacenter in space, just so it can burn up and waste their money
Do you know how BIG they would have to be to dissipate a data center worth of heat to keep it as cool as on earth?
Do you?
Oh, you got me, turned it around. Oh dear, whatever will I do? Oh right, remark how you don't know and should stop supporting a stupid idea in the first place.
A square kilometer in radiator surface area at 100C to emit 1 GW, in case you're wondering.
Do you know how much heat they would need to retain?
To prevent any moisture that might be in the air inside the data center from condensing onto electronics. Admit it, it's a stupid idea and stop defending it as a legitimate one.
Right... and a carpet is a pet you keep in your car, got it.