/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10731989
>bait
OK, I'll explain. Things are hard to cool in space, because you're limited to radiation heat exchange with Earth, Sun and outer space. And growing perfect monocrystals in space (the only production-ready application for orbital manufacturing), requires the source material to be melted in a furnace and kept at a very high temperature for prolonged periods of time (weeks, months etc). Also it's an energy intensive process besides heating, and you can't get a lot of electrical power in space due to the same reason. This process, just like most other things in space, is essentially limited by your capability to cool your spacecraft. You can't have that capability with solid state radiators because they grow in size/mass exponentially (=mechanical problems due to perturbations). Even the hypothetical open-loop droplet radiators russians planned (and subsequently failed to design) for their TEM-1 with orders of magnitude larger surface aren't enough to support a fucking production scale orbital furnace, also such radiator will only work under acceleration even with an electrostatic droplet catcher.

This was a meme in 80's when it was proposed by certain Japanese companies, because the thermodynamics of the production scale process was questionable at best. And it remains a meme today. Cheap access to orbit has little to do with it, things are inherently more complex in space.