[JoelJacobson]

This article made me think of a strange claim by Elon Musk at 07:08 in this [1] interview:

"Cooling is actually much easier in space than it is on earth. You can just radiate to the vacuum."

I don't think that follows. The radiator is only the final heat sink. You still need to move heat from very dense chips into a deployable, space-rated radiator, and handle pumps, loops, leaks, redundancy, radiation damage, replacement, eclipses, Earth IR/albedo, and launch mass.

[1] https://youtu.be/D_1j5dVWNYI?si=R77VeVKlRXRhaBk5&t=428

[tristanj]

Radiators in space are a solved problem. The ISS has 70 kW of cooling via multiple radiators, using a dual loop water/ammonia system. The water loop cools the station and high-priority electronics, then the ammonia loop cools the water loop and transfers heat to the radiators, which release the heat out to space. There are additional radiators just for the solar panels.

AI sat mini can use a simpler single ammonia loop, since the ISS uses a water loop on the station side to avoid toxicity issues in case of a coolant leak.

It's a far simpler engineering problem to solve compared to other challenges SpaceX is facing (Starship, Raptor, Starlink).

[JoelJacobson]

Sorry, should have emphasized that it was the "much easier" part I didn't agree with in that interview.