Have they even talked about how they’re going to handle the heat?
replyI’m willing to believe the construction is plausible (maybe not cost-effective, but possible), and robotic operation of it is a stretch but with some optimism I could be convinced.
I don’t see how they can get rid of the heat, at least in a realistic way that isn’t “a square kilometer of black body radiation surfaces” or something equally “works on paper, so uneconomical it will never actually happen”.
Heat is where the math breaks down. If you examine the heat the ISS is able to deal with (about 70 KW) vs say a H200 SXM5 (700W), you can stick a grand total of 100 units there, or about 12 nodes. This isn't even accounting for supporting infrastructure, compute, etc., nor are we taking a power source into account.
replyEither there's a revolutionary heat dissipation system in the works they're keeping a secret, or my ass is getting a smoke rash.