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GrumpyButtrcup t1_j69b000 wrote

Reply to comment by CubanHermes 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

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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