Moho Probe heat question

[GuyWithGlasses]

Hello fellows,

While my Duna and Dres missions are in travel to their destiny, I'm dessigning a little Moho mission.

The Moho mission will consist in three sats for future manned coverage and ISRU scan and a little lander, but, I've read several times in this forums that heat is a problem near Moho. What heat protection do the lander / sats need?

As always, an image: https://imgur.com/PxlZqbt

Thx!

[Vanamonde]

In an earlier version of the game, Moho itself gave off heat that could damage craft, but that was removed ages ago. Now it's a normal planet, and far enough from the sun that it doesn't require special protection. 

[Xd the great]

Just to be safe, slap some radiators on.

Even if i never do that as the heat is not damaging.

[Snark]

On 7/3/2018 at 1:36 PM, GuyWithGlasses said:

What heat protection do the lander / sats need?

As previous posters have mentioned, you don't need any.  In the stock game, solar heating simply isn't a problem for anything, including the most temperature-sensitive objects in the game (EVA kerbals), unless you get a lot closer to the sun than Moho.  And since there isn't any destination in the stock game closer to the sun than Moho itself, players rarely have a reason to go there.

In short:  radiators aren't necessary for solar heating.  The only time I ever need them in the stock game is for cooling down mining equipment, which generates its own heat.

That said, there are planet packs out there that do have planets a lot closer to the sun than Moho, where you do need radiators.  Or if you decide to send a "sun-diver" mission really close to the sun, just for fun, you could need them then.

But just going to Moho in the stock game?  Nope, don't need them, even a little.

[Gargamel]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

The only time I ever need them in the stock game is for cooling down mining equipment, which generates its own heat.

Nuke Engines used to produce a lot of heat, and any ships that I build that have them clustered I put radiators on, is this no longer an issue?

[Lego_Prodigy]

Really the only thing I would think you would need would be MAYBE one small radiator, thats about it since most things don't really generate enough heat solely from solar radiation heat.

 

This is comming from a guy who was playing around with the S.E.T.E.I.N.A.L  telescope things to find all the dangerous asteroids in my sandbox world (none as it stands), but I was paranoid about it being an "Infrared" telescope and slapped two 10 M heat shields to face the sun on both side of the probe for redundancy, which was just useless.

[GuyWithGlasses]

Thank you everybody for the answers, finally I've installed a small radiator in each sat (and lander). Now, waiting a pair of weeks for the transfer window.

The link: https://imgur.com/U7TeLx8

3 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Nuke Engines used to produce a lot of heat, and any ships that I build that have them clustered I put radiators on, is this no longer an issue?

 

My duna mothership has 4 clusters of three nervs each and i didn't cooled anything in the transfer burn.

 

[Snark]

4 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Nuke Engines used to produce a lot of heat, and any ships that I build that have them clustered I put radiators on, is this no longer an issue?

Nope.  Once upon a time it was an issue, as you note, but that was many KSP versions ago, and it's simply not an issue these days.  They do get warm, yes, but they don't get anywhere near hot enough to blow up.  I've done LV-N burns-- really long ones, like a full half-hour-- at Moho, in full sunlight, with no radiators... and it simply isn't a problem.  It's a non-issue.

There aren't any stock KSP parts that get hot enough to blow up, even in Moho sunlight.  The only stock parts that need radiators these days are ISRUs and drills, since they generate so much heat of their own.

Certainly there are parts from various mods that do make scads of heat and need heavy-duty radiator support, but not the stock engines.

[The Aziz]

16 hours ago, Snark said:

 since there isn't any destination in the stock game closer to the sun than Moho itself, players rarely have a reason to go there.

"science report from space near the sun"

Things are getting already pretty hot there, I can tell you that.

I'm not sure if my probe ever returned from that mission...

[Snark]

9 hours ago, The Aziz said:

"science report from space near the sun"

Yep, that's certainly close enough to need radiators, all right!

However... I've found that in my own gameplay, it basically never comes up.  There's simply no practical reason to go down there.  Maybe it would be different if there was, for example, some huge science multiplier so that you could get tons of science by skimming the sun... but there isn't.  It's worth a few points, sure, but not much more than you get from "high over the Sun" (e.g. just outside Kerbin's SOI), and the lack of biomes means that there's only one set of results to be had.  It's simply not much science; less than you'd get from, for example, just hopping to one additional biome on Moho.