Comment by shagie

Comment by shagie 3 days ago

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> "One modern idea that O’Neill did not consider is to move server farms in space, where power is cheap and you can dump heat into space with a black piece of metal."

Minor quibble - radiators are white in the visible spectrum.

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/8851/why-arent-the...

> The radiators on the ISS are a high-emissivity white paint, meaning that they are dark in the infrared spectrum where the heat is emitted. They are white in the visible spectrum to reflect sunlight.

> The radiators on the shuttle are have a two-layer coating: a silver reflective layer covered by a thin Teflon film. The Teflon layer is opaque to infrared light, so the high emissivity of Teflon dominates. Visible light passes through the Teflon layer and is reflected by the silver layer, so the solar absorbance is low.

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/473486main_i... - page 14 shows them extended and testing at Lockheed.