It's not the fact it's a very fine atmosphere that's the issue, that I agree won't take away much heat, it's the fact that it's there at all. In a complete vacuum the ejecta from the asteroid, including any gases will continue traveling in the direction of the impulse from the explosion and dissipate into the emptimess of space very quickly, of course physics in ED doesn't actually model this behaviour but that's beside the pont. The cold gases produced by the explosion aren't expanding into a vacuum but the very thin atmosphere of a gas giants rings, and of course larger rings will have a denser atmosphere, and that will act as a break on the spread of the gaseous cloud created by the explosion, creating a much denser and longer lasting area of dense and very cold fog from the very cold asteroid.
Asteroid cores are not cold
- Thread starter Soron Silin
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I am talking about EM radiation, yes. Mostly visible light in this case, or whatever is emitted at the highest temperature I can heat the radiator in question to without destroying it.
No heat pump is 100% efficient and with potentially several stages needed, efficiency would be horrible with anything I could affordably build now. I'd assume they are more efficient in the Elite setting, but there would be some losses.
I had a chilled-water cooled TEC setup (a phase change condensor coil cooling water, that was used to cool the hot side of a pile of peltiers, that cooled a mix of ethanol, glycol, and water that ran to my CPU and video card) on one of my computers for a while. Kept parts that needed to dissipate about 600w of heat quite frosty, but I needed about 2000w of power to move that 600w of heat with the temperature delta I was looking for.
Ooh, this was a fun nerdy thread to read through. Sorry I was mostly at work while it was happening!
If I can throw in my two cents (is there a UK equivalent to this expression?) -
Agreed, the cooling effect is clearly caused by contact with a cloud of tiny ice particles. The graphics clearly imply that core cracking leaves behind a substantial cloud of dust, presumably of the same composition as the cracked asteroid. Since the cooling effect only occurs in clouds in icy rings, we can infer that it is due to the volatile nature of the ices. Since the cloud is persistent rather than quickly dissipating, we can infer that it is composed of solid particles rather than gas. (Yes, gas giant rings technically have an atmosphere. But no, it would be too tenuous to affect anything.) That said, I'm skeptical that our ships' radiators would in reality contact a sufficient mass of dusty debris to provide such a strong cooling effect.
Morbad is correct, it is plausible for our ships to dump the claimed power levels using thermal radiation. Just eyeballing the color temperature, the radiators at full load look to be a couple thousand Kelvin if they are nearly ideal blackbody radiators. Fun fact! According to the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, 2050 Kelvin is the temperature at which an ideal blackbody emits one megawatt per square meter.
For what it's worth, my theory is that our ships use a liquid metal for the high-temperature cooling loop, and firing a heat sink actually dumps the current supply and replenishes it with a fresh (cool) stock. That would explain why they can fire so fast, but have a really long reload time.
If I can throw in my two cents (is there a UK equivalent to this expression?) -
Agreed, the cooling effect is clearly caused by contact with a cloud of tiny ice particles. The graphics clearly imply that core cracking leaves behind a substantial cloud of dust, presumably of the same composition as the cracked asteroid. Since the cooling effect only occurs in clouds in icy rings, we can infer that it is due to the volatile nature of the ices. Since the cloud is persistent rather than quickly dissipating, we can infer that it is composed of solid particles rather than gas. (Yes, gas giant rings technically have an atmosphere. But no, it would be too tenuous to affect anything.) That said, I'm skeptical that our ships' radiators would in reality contact a sufficient mass of dusty debris to provide such a strong cooling effect.
Morbad is correct, it is plausible for our ships to dump the claimed power levels using thermal radiation. Just eyeballing the color temperature, the radiators at full load look to be a couple thousand Kelvin if they are nearly ideal blackbody radiators. Fun fact! According to the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, 2050 Kelvin is the temperature at which an ideal blackbody emits one megawatt per square meter.
For what it's worth, my theory is that our ships use a liquid metal for the high-temperature cooling loop, and firing a heat sink actually dumps the current supply and replenishes it with a fresh (cool) stock. That would explain why they can fire so fast, but have a really long reload time.
The cold is there for the coolness effect. Write it up the faster than light travel tab.
This is an interesting possibility I hadn't considered and would certainly simplify heatsink integration.
Fascinating. No, not the discussion. You people. Carry on
Why thank you....wait, that was a compliment right?
Actually I would think just the opposite. The way that ships overheat just from using standard modules indicates they still don't have a firm grasp on efficiency and heat dissipation.