this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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This is what I’ve been tearing my hair out over any time this comes up. If you put a computer in space it will heat up until it achieves incandescence. Which is bad for the performance.
I don't have a good grasp on what technology exists for space, but I would assume that radiators of some sort would be possible. Not in the conventional way that they ineract with a medium to release heat, but instead that the radiators emit heated particles - kind of in the same way that water evaporates without boiling. With that being said, I have no idea what efficiency that would operate under, and I have no idea if such a radiator would be used up fast. It sounds like a terrible idea, but I don't posess the facts.
Some people don't believe in space travel because there is no air to push against in the way that jet engines work. But they fail to understand that space travel operates under other ways to generate force. I just don't want to end up in the same sort of argument as them, believing that it's not possible to cool down machines in space just because there is no medium for conventional cooling.
For an intro to real proven methods you can look up how the cooling for the ISS works. It's quite interesting, but takes a lot of space, for relatively little power.
Exactly. That was my assumption. I just think it's unfortunate that the arguments rely on that conventional cooling wont work rather than pointing out that the existing alternatives are very inefficient.