I doubt it'll make sense any time soon, but some arguments I can think of are that solar in space can easily be ~50% more efficient at any moment while also being continuous (enough) in the right orbit.

An even more radical idea is to put nuclear in space which would sidestep all the earthly hurdles (beyond the launch).

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echoangle 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Right, but even if you get 100% solar time in orbit and maybe 20% on the ground, I still don’t see it. Just from a procurement cost and maintenance standpoint. I think spreading a few datacenters around the world to have quasi continuous availability is easier than launching them on satellites.

> An even more radical idea is to put nuclear in space which would sidestep all the earthly hurdles (beyond the launch).

That makes even less sense to me. Why would you launch then and not just stay on the ground? Do you think a country would allow you to launch a rocket with a nuclear reactor from their land but the reactor is so unsafe that you’re not allowed to operate it on the ground?

Then I would just say put it on a boat and park it in international waters, that’s surely cheaper than orbit, right?

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Ekaros 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nuclear is used in space, but my understanding is that it is too low power and not really scalable to computing needs for this use case. Bonus side really is that nuclear power can provide power for very long time.

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adrian_b 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Until now only energy sources based on radioactive decay have been used in space, which have very low power, but they can provide it for many decades.

Nuclear fission reactors, similar to those used on submarines or ships, would enable very different applications.

Until now, they have not been used for fear of what would happen after a failed rocket launch, when the reactor would fall back on Earth.

This could be mitigated by sending only components of the reactor and assembling it in space.

I do not think that routine exploration of the Solar System beyond Mars will ever be possible without using at least nuclear fission reactors, because it is too slow with chemical sources of energy.

	▲	echoangle an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Actually in the Cold War there were some actual nuclear reactors in space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPAZ_nuclear_reactor#TOPAZ-I > This could be mitigated by sending only components of the reactor and assembling it in space. How would that help? The main problem if the launch fails is that the radioactive material will spread around (in the worst case, they are encased so exactly that doesn’t happen). You could maybe spread out the nuclear material in multiple launches but you would just increase the risk of a small contamination in exchange for a smaller risk of a large contamination. I don’t think the individual parts of the reactor are intrinsically safer than the reactor, it’s not like it’s going to become an atomic explosion during launch.