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CubanHermes OP t1_j693pjj wrote

Reply to comment by mfb- in Is there an upper limit to structure size in a vacuum? Could a sufficiently advanced civilisation build a galaxy sized structure in space or would it become too massive and collapse in on itself? by CubanHermes

Ok, so I just need FTL travel, many galaxies worth of materials, some way to heat the place and billions of workers and we can make a hellish galaxy sized Ikea flat pack colony. Excellent.

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GrumpyButtrcup t1_j69b000 wrote

Wouldn't your giant cube need cooling instead of heat? The heat is generated by the people and machines, so the tricky part is disappating the heat effectively. From what I understand it's harder to cool off in space than to heat up.

Since you're in a vacuum you lose all of that passive cooling we take for granted on Earth.

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bestest_name_ever t1_j69htz5 wrote

Yes, and a compact shape like a cube makes that harder. But the main point is that any conceivable size is still much smaller than galaxy-sized. The death star for example, if it has a level of crew per volume that's comparable to a current ship, would hold several tens of trillions in personnel. And it's tiny, like a quarter the diameter of Ceres. But it could be built without requiring magic materials. Moving it would be a different issue.

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PlaidBastard t1_j6995li wrote

I don't know where you're going with this, but you have my hexwrench in this battle, friend

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bestest_name_ever t1_j69hxzj wrote

No. Billions of workers don't get you anywhere. You'll need numbers of workers you'll have to look up the names for.

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mfb- t1_j6botff wrote

You need cooling, not heating. The heat loss scales with the surface of the structure, but heat production scales with the volume (if we just scale everything up). The volume grows faster than the surface. Even the ISS needs radiators already.

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