Raise the temperature of your radiator by 50 degrees and you double its emission capacity. Or put your radiator in the atmosphere and multiply its heat exchange capacity by a factor of a thousand.

It's not physically impossible. Of course not. It's been done thousands of times already. But it doesn't make any economic sense. It's like putting a McDonald's at the top of Everest. Is it possible? Of course. Is it worth the enormous difficulty and expense to put one there? Not even a little.

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aunty_helen 13 hours ago | parent [-]

For thousands of years we never even looked to Mount Everest, then some bloke on the fiver said he’d give it a shot. Nowadays anyone with the cash and commitment can get the job done.

Same with datacenters in space, not today, but in 1000 years definitely, 100 surely, 10?

As for the economics, it makes about as much sense as running jet engines at full tilt to power them.

	▲	tialaramex 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> some bloke on the fiver said he’d give it a shot Hillary (he features on the NZ Five Dollar note) was one of those guys who does things for no good reason. He also went to both poles. This only tells us that it is indeed possible, but not that it's desirable or will become routine.