How to cool down ship parts? engine off, heat still rising...

[fireblade274]

so i have this small lander with 2 atomic engines. ive landed at Ike, shut off engines, but the heat is still rising and nothing is going down. I have a heat shield, but i dont want it to run out before re entry. Why is my thermometer going up when im far from the sun, engines are off, and im landed? any ideas?

Ill try to get a screen shot later

[Whovian]

Wait. You're on Ike, but reentry is a concern?

Also maybe the engine code derped; try right-clicking on the engines and shutting them down.

EDIT: By "thermometer" you mean the overheat gauge, right?

[Randazzo]

so i have this small lander with 2 atomic engines. ive landed at Ike, shut off engines, but the heat is still rising and nothing is going down. I have a heat shield, but i dont want it to run out before re entry. Why is my thermometer going up when im far from the sun, engines are off, and im landed? any ideas?

Ill try to get a screen shot later

Depending on how long you ran those engines, they are potentially still hot. Even after you turn your engines off, that heat is going to stick around for awhile and spread to the other parts of your ship until it equalizes.

[OddFunction]

I hate atomic engines for this reason. The only solution I have found is to timewarp for a bit; eventually it will cool off.

If you want a mod solution, check this out:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/118189-1-0-2-Heat-Management-Multinode-Heatsinks-and-AHMS-units!-%280-24-3-6-15%29

[cybersol]

Its working as intended, at least until they change it all again in 1.0.3. Heat has built up in your engines, and it spreading by conduction to nearby parts. It will continue spreading until the temperature equalizes. Meanwhile, the heat is slowly being radiated away by most parts, but it will take some time to dissipate. You can enable temperature details in the right click menus to see it happen in detail (Alt-F12 -> Physics -> Thermal -> Display in Action Menus). Opening solar panels can help as they are good radiators. Also in the future a few C type wings are lightweight and effective radiators.

[DeMatt]

Its working as intended, at least until they change it all again in 1.0.3. Heat has built up in your engines, and it spreading by conduction to nearby parts. It will continue spreading until the temperature equalizes. Meanwhile, the heat is slowly being radiated away by most parts, but it will take some time to dissipate. You can enable temperature details in the right click menus to see it happen in detail (Alt-F12 -> Physics -> Thermal -> Display in Action Menus). Opening solar panels can help as they are good radiators. Also in the future a few C type wings are lightweight and effective radiators.

Alternatively, you can crank up the rate of radiation in the same debug menu. The default (and minimum) setting is 1; it can go as high as 100, which will ensure that your LV-N's never overheat just by running.

[match]

Space is such a terrible conductor

[Sharpy]

Heat of some elements rise as they accept heat from other, hotter elements. I'm pretty sure plain "warp" won't stop the heat, you need "physwarp", alt+.

The one way to run the nukes without overheating is to turn the throttle waaaay down. I've reached nearly 5000m/s yesterday on nukes, Throttle at around 4th notch on the scale, a notch below the first big mark, engine with "throttle limit" at 90%. Even with physwarp at 4x it took hours of real time but the engine never overheats.

(just don't change ships ("switch to" or through KSC) while you have the nuke running at the low-throttle. It IS doable, the craft stops gaining speed but still burns fuel, especially in normal time warp.

[Streetwind]

Heat of some elements rise as they accept heat from other, hotter elements. I'm pretty sure plain "warp" won't stop the heat, you need "physwarp", alt+.

Actually, the heat system is simulated during on-rails timewarp as well... up to a certain point. As soon as you hit x1000 or higher, all temperature on all parts resets to ~289 K and remains that way. But below that warp factor, everything is processed normally.

So one (albeit a bit cheaty) way to cool down your nukes is to go to timewarp x1000 once with the ship focused, so they reset.