Comment by delichon

Comment by delichon 2 days ago

For radiative cooling using aluminum, per 1000 watts at 300 kelvin: ~2.4m^2 area, ~4.8 liters volume, ~13kg weight. So a Starship (150k kg, re-usable) could carry about a megawatt of radiators per launch to LEO.

And aluminum is abundant in the lunar crust.

ehnto a day ago

We are jumping pretty far ahead for a planet that can barely put two humans up there, but it is a great deal of my scifi dreams in one technology tree so I'll happily watch them try.

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eru a day ago

The grandfather comment is perhaps mixing up two things:
If launch costs are cheap enough, you can bring aluminum up from earth.
But once your in-space economy is developed enough, you might want to tap the moon or asteroids for resources.

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