The infinite full throttle LV-N cluster. Temperature curve flattens.

[ShadowZone]

EDIT: This was supposed to be a discussion about how to insulate nuke engines. Why was this moved to the Spacecraft Exchange??? There is no craft presented here.

So since I was a big fan of the "nuke" in 0.90 and used it basically for all my interplanetary ships, I was a bit miffed about the heat issues it now has. So I made a test rig:

It appears the best solution is using an FL-T100 small tank, put a boatload of wings on it (24 "Type D" structural wings in my case) and then attach that contraption to the rest of the ship.

The worst setup? Putting a nuke on a girder. Solar Panels on an FL-T100 also didn't really help a lot.

The end result: a 8 nuke cluster firing at full throttle for more than 22 minutes. The temperature curve flattens after about 1990 Kelvin and the heat buildup after that becomes negligable. 10 minutes after shutdown the heat was back to normal levels. Interplanetary missions, here I come!

Edited May 3, 2015 by ShadowZone

[Temeter]

You don't need als those parts after 1.0.2. Just don't put your nukes (or the tanks they're attached to) on struts and interplanetary ships should be able to do 3k dv burns without even getting close to overheating.

Btw, LVNs survive up to 2500 Kelvin.

[allmhuran]

Kinda odd really, since with a setup like that the heat radiating out of each panel will largely be reabsorbed by its neighbouring panels.

[ShadowZone]

You don't need als those parts after 1.0.2. Just don't put your nukes (or the tanks they're attached to) on struts and interplanetary ships should be able to do 3k dv burns without even getting close to overheating.

Btw, LVNs survive up to 2500 Kelvin.

I tend to disagree. When I put a nuke on an FL-T100 without the wings, the tank explodes after 3 minutes of thrust and the nuke reaches >2000K in that period of time as well. So if you want a solution to dissipate heat from a nuke without adding a humongous tank before it, the FL-T100 + 24 wings may be your best option.

[Foxster]

Best way to keep nukes cool is to make sure they are attached directly to their own largish tank. So, instead of one big tank with the engines bolted on with octo struts, couplers or radially with whatever, it is best to make your craft so that engines have a decent sized tank each like on the right in the pic.

[RocketBlam]

That's an ingenious solution though... It basically works as a heat sink, which is surprising.

[Temeter]

I tend to disagree. When I put a nuke on an FL-T100 without the wings, the tank explodes after 3 minutes of thrust and the nuke reaches >2000K in that period of time as well. So if you want a solution to dissipate heat from a nuke without adding a humongous tank before it, the FL-T100 + 24 wings may be your best option.

Don't put nukes on a FL-T100. Heating creates two weak links, one is the nuke, which can withstand 2500k and rarely overheats, and the part a nuke is connected too. And a FL-T100 has an extremly low thermal mass and therfor overheats in no time. You can see those infos when you activate the heat context info in the thermal debug menu. Even a FLT-800 would work around a million times better.

One actual mistake in your build are the upper tanks, though: They are somehow isolated and don't get to spread any heat, so there isn't any reason to put wings on them..

Look at this:

http://i.imgur.com/0fHL0Hw.jpg

This ship could, with full tanks, managed 2000+ dv in a single burn in 1.0, were heat was a lot more dangerous. Only loss was the command core, but that was my own fault since that's the one part where you don't want to spread heat too.

The single engines are all connected to a big tank, which would heat up slowly and reasonably radiate heat away. Furthermore, that tank doesn't just have to cope with the heat alone, since the conductivity distributes heat over the whole craft and every single part radiates heat. While I didn't test it in 1.0.2 (was an early ship to test heat), I would bet that ship won't overheat at all.

Edited May 3, 2015 by Temeter

[ShadowZone]

Don't put nukes on a FL-T100. Heating creates two weak links, one is the nuke, which can withstand 2500k and rarely overheats, and the part a nuke is connected too. And a FL-T100 has an extremly low thermal mass and therfor overheats in no time. You can see those infos when you activate the heat context info in the thermal debug menu. Even a FLT-800 would work around a million times better.

Yeah but it looks really bad

I tend to build spaceships from an aesthetical perspective, so I just wanted as compact a nuke cluster as possible. And I need 8 nukes to have transfer burns that don't take weeks on my 250 ton ship.

One actual mistake in your build are the upper tanks, though: They are somehow isolated and don't get to spread any heat, so there isn't any reason to put wings on them.

That's because cubic octagonal struts apparently are made of the best insulator in the world

Even if I use the radial attachment points, the heat still doesn't get transferred to the bigger tanks (as was my intention).

We really need a) radiators "heat pipes" to transfer heat from part A to part B