It's really cool that SpaceX has the ability to put stuff in orbit without it being a billion-dollar event. But I don't see any advantage to having unmaintainable tech in orbit, where all you can do is throw away an entire satellite.
What's the advantage? You can get solar power here on earth. We're not running out of land; we could put them in the middle of nowhere if we wanted, for way less than orbit.
I just can't think of any reason why we'd do this, other than "it's cool". Which, fair, but it seems like a waste.
Well, I don't know if they're doing this, but PV can be much lighter in space. Much of the mass (and cost) of PV on Earth is structure to support it against gravity and weather. In space, a thin film PV array could be as little as a few microns thick (using for example CdTe, which absorbs light much more strongly than silicon).
Combine that with the 5-10x higher production from being in constant unfiltered sunlight, and lack of need for storage, and it could well be much cheaper to make the power in space.
It is much more difficult than that. Starlink is essentially IT infrastructure, which certainly produces heat but nothing on the level of pure compute. Ejecting heat in space is a difficult problem that is currently solved on the ISS with large IR radiators which take up weight and space. The size, weight, power, cost tradeoffs lean heavily in favor of ground-based compute.
Why is that unsustainable? You need to present an argument that is more than just "large number! wave hands!"
It's just like the arguments used by anti-renewable energy forces here on Earth. "Large number (of PV modules and wind turbines and batteries)! Unpossible!"
And no, that launch rate does not "wreck the planet".
It's really cool that SpaceX has the ability to put stuff in orbit without it being a billion-dollar event. But I don't see any advantage to having unmaintainable tech in orbit, where all you can do is throw away an entire satellite.
What's the advantage? You can get solar power here on earth. We're not running out of land; we could put them in the middle of nowhere if we wanted, for way less than orbit.
I just can't think of any reason why we'd do this, other than "it's cool". Which, fair, but it seems like a waste.
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