Dedicated Radiator Panel parts

[Whirligig Girl]

It would be really great if we could have a set of proper radiator panels that would rotate away from the sun, and act as more efficient radiators. They could look much cooler (metaphorically, I mean), because they could glow a dim red when radiating heat.

Solar panels being radiators doesn't make much sense, because solar panels point towards the light, but radiators are generally pointed AWAY from the sun so that they aren't heated by it.

It would just be a bit more complete now that we have a proper heat system. Once we have this, we might be able to use such things as nuclear reactors.

[klgraham1013]

I really hope that Squad doesn't think the solar panels are a "good enough" solution. We need actual radiators.

[Brotoro]

I agree. Both surface mounted radiator panels (like the Apollo Service Module had mounted on it) and extendable radiator panels that orient their surfaces at right angkes to the sunlight.

[Frozen_Heart]

Yep agreed. Before we didn't really need them but now they are essential to use nuclear engines.

[Kerbart]

Aside from that, they could be made [amazingly] awesome and glow as they heat up.

[regex]

Agreed. This is a great suggestion, but I also think they'd should be suitably balanced for the game. We don't need a killer solution to an interesting problem.

[Technical Ben]

There never is a killer solution...

[Red Iron Crown]

I'd love some better heat management parts. The three things I'm really wishing for:

- Dedicated radiators.

- Insulators to separate stacks into thermal zones

- Heat pipes, parts installed like struts that have extremely high thermal conductivity between the two connected parts

[nholzric]

Agreed. This is a great suggestion, but I also think they'd should be suitably balanced for the game. We don't need a killer solution to an interesting problem.

Are radiators active or passive? To avoid the "killer solution" you could make radiators require electricity. While unpowered it would act like a normal part radiating heat at some (probably good) rate, but when you powered it up it would accumulate and thus radiate heat more quickly. When you turned it off it would continue to radiate out but would also share any leftover heat back into the craft. In my head that sounds like a good balance - it'd be powerful and useful but with the costs of high power requirement and danger when you turn it off that it doesn't overheat other parts.

[Aerindel]

Absolutely. Its nuts to have parts that heat up and no parts to cool them down.

[Angelo Kerman]

I'm in the process of studying the new heat mechanics and have lots of questions myself, because I want my DSEV radiators to be active. I define that as transferring heat from the various parts into the radiators themselves, and relying on the game's new blackbody shader to make them glow. I have some ideas on how to transfer heat but need help to know what the parameters mean, like thermalMass and radiativeArea. If the stock game uses the Stefan-Boltzmann law then I need a few parameters to calculate how much heat to transfer to the radator, such as the heat capacity of the working fluid. Definitely a work in progress for my mod, and I am just getting started.

[Coyote27]

Another idea that might be more complicated but also interesting would be liquid coolant that can be vented... perhaps an engine that naturally runs hot, like a Mainsail, could benefit from this, and a coolant tank would automatically consume its coolant to keep the engine below overheat level. This would add more weigh to a rocket, but it wouldn't induce drag the way that radiator panels would, so it'd be a better choice for liftoff stages and boosters. It still might be too complicated to bother with, though... unless it consumes monopropellant, which stretches believability unless monopropellant is pressurized gas instead of hypergolic chemicals. It's a thought, anyway.

I do really want heat radiator panels, not only for functionality but aesthetics too. I've used structural panels to represent them in the past, especially on space station trusses orthogonal to the solar panel arrays, but those are going to be really hard to get into orbit now with the new aerodynamics.

[chaos_forge]

I would like to see dedicated radiator parts as well.

EDIT: a cool feature would be if open cargo/service bay doors acted as heat radiators, just like the space shuttle cargo bay doors do in real life.

Edited April 28, 2015 by chaos_forge

[draeath]

Throwing in my own $0.02, I'd agree that some form of dedicated radiators would be nice - or even dedicated heat sinks.

What would -really- make me happy though was a form of active cooling, expending a resource to dump heat. I'd say we could use LOX, but that's not very realistic as pure oxygen is quite corrosive, so you wouldn't want to flow it over heat sinks. (case in point, ISS uses Ammonia in the cooling loops instead of water, because of corrosion and electrical concerns)

[Renegrade]

A solid, good idea - I approve.

I agree. Both surface mounted radiator panels (like the Apollo Service Module had mounted on it) and extendable radiator panels that orient their surfaces at right angkes to the sunlight.

Yeah, that would be awesome. Interstellar had those - they looked neat, and it was cool that they had kinda the opposite objective vs. a solar panel heh

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm in the process of studying the new heat mechanics and have lots of questions myself, because I want my DSEV radiators to be active. I define that as transferring heat from the various parts into the radiators themselves, and relying on the game's new blackbody shader to make them glow. I have some ideas on how to transfer heat but need help to know what the parameters mean, like thermalMass and radiativeArea. If the stock game uses the Stefan-Boltzmann law then I need a few parameters to calculate how much heat to transfer to the radator, such as the heat capacity of the working fluid. Definitely a work in progress for my mod, and I am just getting started.

Thermal mass is the capacity of the part to absorb heat, i.e. the specific heat of the material times the mass of the part. It takes more heat to raise the temperature of a part by a given amount if it has a higher thermal mass. So parts with higher thermal mass change temperature more slowly than those with a lower thermal mass, both upwards and downwards.

Radiative area is the theoretical area that emits or absorbs radiated heat. Parts emit heat when in shadow and absorb it when in sunlight (at least I think this is modelled). Parts with a larger radiative area gain or lose heat faster than those with smaller radiative areas.

[NoMrBond]

extendable radiator panels that orient their surfaces at right angkes to the sunlight.

I was

with something like that earlier (fudging the rotation using the solar panel module)

They're a bit big though (ok they're ruddy enormous @36m long), I'll have a look at making something a bit smaller

[cicatrix]

A solid, good idea - I approve.

Yeah, that would be awesome. Interstellar had those - they looked neat, and it was cool that they had kinda the opposite objective vs. a solar panel heh

The problem with the radiators from KSPI is that they are super-heavy. I don't know the real life ratios so I can't tell if these masses were real or not and what it takes to cool something down in vacuum, but I had a very hard time lifting these to orbit. Also, I should probably mention that in KSPI solar panels produce waste heat too and that too is a problem. Forgetting to place a radiator or placing a insufficiently big one could render your craft powerless.

[Angelo Kerman]

Thermal mass is the capacity of the part to absorb heat, i.e. the specific heat of the material times the mass of the part. It takes more heat to raise the temperature of a part by a given amount if it has a higher thermal mass. So parts with higher thermal mass change temperature more slowly than those with a lower thermal mass, both upwards and downwards.

Radiative area is the theoretical area that emits or absorbs radiated heat. Parts emit heat when in shadow and absorb it when in sunlight (at least I think this is modelled). Parts with a larger radiative area gain or lose heat faster than those with smaller radiative areas.

Oh very cool, thank you. that is a piece of the puzzle. My mod already uses the Stefan-Boltzmann law and calculates the temperature increase based on specific heat and mass of the working fluid. Now I just need to know what values ksp uses for specific heat and the mass of the working fluid. I suspect that the mass is just the current mass of the part itself, plus any contained resources. If I can get the heat stored in the part, then I know by how much to adjust its temperature when I transfer that heat to my radiators. I think there was a thermal mass modifier field too. So many questions...

[Red Iron Crown]

Oh very cool, thank you. that is a piece of the puzzle. My mod already uses the Stefan-Boltzmann law and calculates the temperature increase based on specific heat and mass of the working fluid. Now I just need to know what values ksp uses for specific heat and the mass of the working fluid. I suspect that the mass is just the current mass of the part itself, plus any contained resources. If I can get the heat stored in the part, then I know by how much to adjust its temperature when I transfer that heat to my radiators. I think there was a thermal mass modifier field too. So many questions...

As I understand it:

- All parts has a default specific heat of 800 kJ/tonne-Kelvin defined in Physics.cfg in the root folder (standardSpecificHeatCapacity)

- Parts can have that modified in their cfgs by a multiplier (thermalMassModifier, setting this to 2 would double specific heat)

- Resources also have their own specific heats defined in ResourcesGeneric.cfg in Gamedata/Squad/Resources (hsp)

- Part thermal mass thus should be (dryMass * standardSpecificHeatCapacity *thermalMassModifier) + (resourceMass * hsp) <- Repeat last section for each resource within the part. Units are kJ/K.

Have a poke around the Physics.cfg file in the root of your KSP install, there's some interesting stuff in there.

[Alias72]

I would like to see radiators and heat sinks. I know fuel tanks and pre-coolers can both store a lot of heat but I still feel that a dedicated heat sink which draws energy from all craft parts and distributes them to radiators would be useful.

[Angelo Kerman]

As I understand it:

- All parts has a default specific heat of 800 kJ/tonne-Kelvin defined in Physics.cfg in the root folder (standardSpecificHeatCapacity)

- Parts can have that modified in their cfgs by a multiplier (thermalMassModifier, setting this to 2 would double specific heat)

- Resources also have their own specific heats defined in ResourcesGeneric.cfg in Gamedata/Squad/Resources (hsp)

- Part thermal mass thus should be (dryMass * standardSpecificHeatCapacity *thermalMassModifier) + (resourceMass * hsp) <- Repeat last section for each resource within the part. Units are kJ/K.

Have a poke around the Physics.cfg file in the root of your KSP install, there's some interesting stuff in there.

Thank you much for this information! This will definitely help me on my quest to get a working active radiator.

[Dooz]

My fuel tank exploded just being attached to a NERVA running at full thrust.

[DundraL]

I'd love some better heat management parts. The three things I'm really wishing for:

- Dedicated radiators.

- Insulators to separate stacks into thermal zones

- Heat pipes, parts installed like struts that have extremely high thermal conductivity between the two connected parts

Wow, I really like those ideas... esp the head pipe... You should make another thread asking for radiators AND those other things... would be a great addition to the game.

Also... why not have a radiator on the shaded side of existing deployable solar panels? then u could just modify the model/ texture and get the job done. As for fixed panels, just make a retexture of a radiator. then its just 1 added radiator part instead of several.

But I really like that heatpipe idea... would be great to pipe heat generators directly to radiators!

Edited April 29, 2015 by DundraL

[Brotoro]

I'd love some better heat management parts. The three things I'm really wishing for:

- Dedicated radiators.

- Insulators to separate stacks into thermal zones

- Heat pipes, parts installed like struts that have extremely high thermal conductivity between the two connected parts

Ooo, yes, an active heat pump system. Connect them like fuel ducts.