Why doesn't heat increase the faster you go in supercruise?

amadeus1171

amadeus1171
Shouldn't this be a mechanic? And if not that, then definitely power usage should equal heat generation.

This should also hold when out of supercruise.

Heat should have a direct relation to power, and I don't see that happening in both supercruise and normal operation.
 

Quantis Trap

Quantis Trap
amadeus1171 said:
Shouldn't this be a mechanic? And if not that, then definitely power usage should equal heat generation.

This should also hold when out of supercruise.

Heat should have a direct relation to power, and I don't see that happening in both supercruise and normal operation.
Click to expand...
Here are some assumptions you may be making which may not be correct:
  1. Going faster in supercruise generates more heat from speed / friction / movement.
    • The Frame Shift Drive (supercruise and the bigger jumps) is not like conventional rocket motors. It probably doesn't "propel" the ship. It probably folds time space and transfers the ship from one location to another without friction, inertia and heat generation. This also could explain why the ship occupants are not instantly killed when the ship "excelerates" or "turns".
  2. The faster the FSD propels you, the more energy it needs and the more heat it produces.
    • This may not be true. Maybe the travel in supercruise gets more efficient over time?
 

varonica

varonica
CMDR QUANTIS TRAP said:
Here are some assumptions you may be making which may not be correct:
  1. Going faster in supercruise generates more heat from speed / friction / movement.
    • The Frame Shift Drive (supercruise and the bigger jumps) is not like conventional rocket motors. It probably doesn't "propel" the ship. It probably folds time space and transfers the ship from one location to another without friction, inertia and heat generation. This also could explain why the ship occupants are not instantly killed when the ship "excelerates" or "turns".
  2. The faster the FSD propels you, the more energy it needs and the more heat it produces.
    • This may not be true. Maybe the travel in supercruise gets more efficient over time?
Click to expand...

1) It's correct there should be no friction due to it being a different method of propulsion, you aren't in normal space so there's no friction, so no extra heat.

2) That's not true because the FSD has a fixed rate of travel, it always propels you at the same rate, however the max speed depends on the local gravitational field not how fast the FSD is pushing.

Where heat should be generated is when we enter a local gravitational field faster than the allowed max speed, that's when we see the "slow down" message, so looping around planets to slow down and etc. So the FSD in SC produces a fixed amount of energy to create the field around the ship to propel it.
 

Commander Biscuit

Commander Biscuit
There's no friction in space, It' s a vacuum. So you will continue accelerating forever if push is continually applied. It won't cost more power to push you just because you're going faster.
 

varonica

varonica
Commander Biscuit said:
There's no friction in space, It' s a vacuum. So you will continue accelerating forever if push is continually applied. It won't cost more power to push you just because you're going faster.
Click to expand...

No that's not true actually, the density of matter in space is certainly low enough to not cause any noticable friction on anything we can launch at the moment, but once you start approaching an appreciable fraction of the speed of light it becomes significant. The actual estimate is about 1 atom per cubic centimeter which is not something we would need to worry about for current speeds, but even an atom can cause damage when it's striking a surface at close to the speed of light.

Oh yes, just a point, a perfect vacuum is only a theoretical possibility, even removing all atoms from an area doesn't provide a perfect vacuum because of electromagnetic energy and planck energy and as we all know E=MC2 so it's still not a vacuum even with no matter. It's rather complicated but if you could achieve a perfect vacuum, that is no matter, no energy, even planck energy the temperature would be zero K, and that according to current theoretical physics, is impossible, nothing can be zero K.
 

Commander Biscuit

Commander Biscuit
varonica said:
No that's not true actually, the density of matter in space is certainly low enough to not cause any noticable friction on anything we can launch at the moment, but once you start approaching an appreciable fraction of the speed of light it becomes significant. The actual estimate is about 1 atom per cubic centimeter which is not something we would need to worry about for current speeds, but even an atom can cause damage when it's striking a surface at close to the speed of light.
Click to expand...
Right but we're talking about magical drives that prevent atoms hitting us. We can assume we're still being propelled somewhat conventionally in supercruise even if there's no visible thrust, because we can't instantly stop. So in that friction free state, there's no reason a drive would need to work harder to push us.
 

Vorxian

Vorxian
Doesn't space have a constant background temperature of some −270°C ? (other than the little fan heater in the cockpit to stop us all turning in to a snowman) just for the fact that our ships heat up in the first place is just poor ship design. Unless you're orbiting a sun, there's no logical way any ship could over heat with a −270°C backdrop. It'd be like trying to over-heat a V8 submerged in liquid nitrogen....

:coffee:
 

Zieman

Zieman
Vorxian said:
Unless you're orbiting a sun, there's no logical way any ship could over heat with a −270°C backdrop. It'd be like trying to over-heat a V8 submerged in liquid nitrogen....
Click to expand...
Nope.
In vacuum, there's nothing to conduct heat away from the ship, it needs to radiate it. And that is much more inefficient, to the point that the possibility of overheating becomes something you need to consider.
 

Thatchinho

Thatchinho
Vorxian said:
just for the fact that our ships heat up in the first place is just poor ship design. Unless you're orbiting a sun, there's no logical way any ship could over heat with a −270°C backdrop. It'd be like trying to over-heat a V8 submerged in liquid nitrogen....

:coffee:
Click to expand...
Just to add to what @Zieman has already said, nope, the analogy’s completely wrong.

You know vacuum flasks? The ones that keep hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold, by insulating them most of the way round with a layer of vacuum? Well you know how they’re not perfect, because the vacuum layer can’t go all the way round?

Well imagine a big one where the vacuum does go all the way round.

That’s what the v8 would be running inside.

To look at it in a different but roughly equivalent way, you know how the v8 normally has a radiator and fan to get rid of the excess heat it generates? What would happen if you put it inside the best insulation possible instead?
 

aRJay

aRJay
Vorxian said:
Doesn't space have a constant background temperature of some −270°C ? (other than the little fan heater in the cockpit to stop us all turning in to a snowman) just for the fact that our ships heat up in the first place is just poor ship design. Unless you're orbiting a sun, there's no logical way any ship could over heat with a −270°C backdrop. It'd be like trying to over-heat a V8 submerged in liquid nitrogen....

:coffee:
Click to expand...
Conduction is a very efficient way of transferring heat, which is what your V8 in LN2 example uses, convection would also be helping a lot.
In space the major method of transferring heat is radiation which is much less efficient and influenced by surface area. Space might be that cold but as Thermos have demonstrated vacuum is a great insulator.
Remember the old Space Shuttle, the reason it opened its cargo bay doors in orbit was to try and radiate the excess heat.
 

Mimix

Mimix
Don't think it should. You don't actually move in supercruise, the FSD moves space around your ship, which is also why FTL travel is physically possible and there's no time dilation.
 

Donaldi

Donaldi
amadeus1171 said:
Heat should have a direct relation to power, and I don't see that happening in both supercruise and normal operation.
Click to expand...

But it does.
The only issue is that it is infrafred radiation.
Which travels at the speed of light, having a hard time catching up with you.

So you leave a bunch of heat behind you for your followers to deal with.
As soon as you stop it catches up with you.
Travelled 720 light minutes? Well, wait half a day at exact that location the heat bubble follows you to.


But at least You do not have a problem that you can see immediate actions of ships almost 2.000 light seconds away from you in SC. That's nice.

Ever thought about that the systems you are visiting at the border of the galaxy has been mapped by someone who use severly outdated information to locate them?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom