Space is cold (very cold, 2.7K (-270.45 deg c)) so a thermal fin / radiator is a massively effective way to disperse heat *quickly* (as you put it) without disposing of the heat collector. The laws of thermodynamics mean that the heatsink and the vacuum of space are constantly trying to reach an equilibrium, so having to dispose of your heatsink is not only a waste of resources, but also entirely unneccesary. To quote a piece on heat sinks on space craft "The heat collected and transported has to be rejected at an appropriate temperature to a heat sink, which is usually the surrounding space environment". Yes there are certain situations where disposing of your heat is desirable such as escaping an attacker but for plain old, every day use retractable heat sinks are more than adequate to dispose of ship heat build up. We will, of course, never see them in ED because heat is another penalty system like credits, cheating NPCs, borked missions, nerfed ships and systems, etc. (all of course to maintain balance).
Sorry. No.
The ambient temperature of space only matters in the theory of using conductive methods of heat transfer. That is, methods that require one body of mass to be in direct contact with another body of mass.
Since space
has no mass, and by it's very definition and nature is largely devoid of such, the local temperature of space has absolutely nothing to do with how well heat can be dispersed in it.
Radiant heat, as has been explained, is the most efficient method for dispersing heat into space. This does not, however, mean that it is an efficient method overall.
Using conductive surfaces like radiators to convert heat into different forms of energy such as infrared and visible radiation is how the ships normally work. However, it is a comparatively slow and inefficient process when compared to most forms of conductive or convective heat transfer.
Very slow, and very inefficient. Tell you what. As an experiment, take the heatsink off of your computer's processor and start up a linpack stress test, and tell us how well your processor manages to disperse the heat it produces by radiating it out through the air, compared to how well it does this by conducting it through the heatsink and likewise the heatsink through the air.
That should be fun.
It's 3302 not 2016 though, and peltiers can cool anything any amount as long as you have a way to dispose of that heat from the hot side
Now if only there was any kind of material you could dump vast amounts of heat into without it affecting the surroundings... My mate sent me this today
Tiniest jump of imagination to think of what we could invent in another thousand years
You won't get peltiers much more efficient than what they are now unless you develop a high temperature superconductor capable of working at room temperature and exceeding the ranges mentioned in that video, and even then that would only put it on par with conventional methods.
So theoretically sure, but because physics no.
If you're willing to spend energy, you can get around that with heat pumps, using heating and cooling from expanding gases. It's also how refrigerators work.
I mean, technically, there's a tiny part of your cooling system which is as hot as the thing you're jettisoning, but practically it lets you cool your ship to freezing by ejecting arbitrarily hot bits of lead.
Kind of yes and no. Your refrigerator needs to disperse the excess heat created by pressurizing the refrigerant first, which is why they have radiators. Once the excess energy from the pressurization has been bled off into the room then the adiabatic process can occur.
