you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 3 points 5 hours ago (9 children)

How does transferring heat out of a ship work? On the one hand, it's really cold in space, but on the other, there's no substrate to absorb and transfer the heat.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

    Thermal Radiation, you send it somewhere else. It’s how the sun heats our planet.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

    Isn't thermal radiation kinda slow, though? It's basically air cooling, but without air or fans.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 3 hours ago

    It is, yes. A large fraction (about a quarter?) of what looks like solar panels on the ISS are actually dedicated radiator panels. The solar panels are angled to face the sun, and the radiators are angled at 90 degrees from the sun, to face empty space.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 5 hours ago* (3 children)

    From a thermodynamical standpoint, the whole Enterprise is something of a mess.

    But, hey, if you already have a "Heisenberg-Compensator", also having a "Boltzmann-Compensator" is probably not that implausible... ;-)

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

    And you can always re-arrange the sensor arrays if you're ever really in a pinch, but it'll take some time.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments