3 ms·
What is a good rejection temperature to use for medium earth orbit? Assuming you would orient your radiator normal to the incoming light from the sun, and norm
by floxy 11mo ago
What is a good rejection temperature to use for medium earth orbit? Assuming you would orient your radiator normal to the incoming light from the sun, and normal to the earth-shine/earth-radiation. And in the shade from your PV panels. Is 50 Kelvin a reasonable temperature? Then you could radiate 1 GW of thermal energy at 350 K using a 2.5e6 m^2 surface (assuming 0.9 for emissivity). That is a square about 1.55 km on a side. Maybe reversible computing is step one in this plan.
- floxy 11mo agoInterestingly enough, to get 1 GWe, using 30% efficient PV panels and assuming 1360 W/m^2 insolation, you'd also need ~2.5e6 m^2 of PV panels.
- floxy 11mo agoAh, for a radiator, you can use both sides; one side exposed to the solar system north, and the other side facing south. So the 1.55 km on a side gets reduce by a factor of sqrt(2), to 1.1 km on a side.