05-18-2019, 12:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-18-2019, 01:09 PM by The Astronomer.)
(05-18-2019, 04:05 AM)Noclevername Wrote:(05-18-2019, 03:44 AM)Drashner1 Wrote: b) For advanced radiators - just how big do they need to be. Some time back we were having a discussion around waste heat on reaction drive ships and droplet radiators. I came across a (now unfortunately taken down) page that purported to calculate the performance of a droplet radiator of a given capability and also provide its dimensions. The resulting numbers were amazingly small - which led us to distrust them to some degree. It would be nice if someone could figure out the size of a droplet radiator based on different assumptions - both to help with the relevant EG entries and with image creation.
According to Children Of A Dead Earth's science-based simulations, hotter radiators can be smaller. There's crunchy numbers involved, but I'm the wrongest person to analyze them.
Maybe the ships in question have radiators, but the pics are just "artist's recreations" that don't emphasize all the details.
But the radiators are a pretty important detail of the ship...
On radiator temperature: yes, exactly, you’ll want to run your radiators as hot as possible. If I remember (and write it) correctly, the radiator surface area required to reject an amount of heat is inversely proportional to power of four of temperature, so as you bump the temperature up, the surface area required gets down extremely fast.
On Starlark: I thought the radiators have to be on almost immediately after turning on the engine...
On droplet radiators: This Space Calc page might be useful.