Heat comparison of ways to attach engines

[Foxster]

I connected three nuke engines in different ways.

Left to right: Cubic Octagonal Strut, straight onto tank's coupling point and a BZ-52 Radial Attachment Point.

After running the engines for a couple of minutes the temps were 980, 348, 940 and the tank's temp had gone up by about 40.

So, the non-directly-attached engines were thermally running away, albeit much slower than in 1.0 and may never have reached the point of exploding before running out of fuel. The directly attached engine was much better, with its heat seemingly being dumped into the tank and dissipated well from there.

A good solution also seems to be to use stack couplers. Before 1.0 I didn't use them because they were heavy and you could do a better job with some Cubic Octagonal Struts.

Here the temp of the engines in the same time reached 820 and rising. So better than the other part-based attachment methods, with the coupler and tank dissipating heat.

But the best way I've found so far to manage heat (other than straight onto a coupling point) is like this. The temp only got to 640...

So, if you are going to run nukes for a long time then I'd suggest the following order as best for avoiding the engines blowing up through overheating:

1. Directly attach to tank(s) coupling point. If you have, say, four engines then use four smaller tanks rather one big one to give four direct attachment points.

2. Radially attach the engines to the side of a big tank with small tanks.

3. Use a stack coupler.

4. Use Cubic Octagonal Struts or BZ-52 Radial Attachment Points only if you must, as the temp could reach exploding point on a really long burn.

Edited May 2, 2015 by Foxster