Heat Radiators(?)

[jondugger123]

Hello fellow Kerbonauts. I had a question in regards to heat radiators;

Has anyone ever absolutely needed heat radiators for a mission? The only time I've really overheated while going interplanetary was during the long nuke-engine burns, and even then the heat dissipates shortly after. I have heard something along the lines of overheating affecting the efficiency of engines, but I'm not sure.

Answers will be used for future reference, so thank you in advance. Fly safe.

[Red Iron Crown]

More of a Gameplay Question, moving.

They are hardly needed since 1.0.3 reduced the heat output of the LV-N. Useful for sundiving, though.

[jondugger123]

Sorry for the misplacement, I'm not too keen on the placement of threads yet. But thank you!

[mythbusters844]

What was the point of adding radiators if they have no use now?

[KerikBalm]

well, sundiving... as he just said...

Or really really long LV-N burns... but that wouldn't even matter so much... I guess if you don't want your parts to glow as much ,even if they wouldn't overheat and explode anyway?

Cooling down faster before a rentry that will put your craft to the limit?

I don't know... they don't really seem needed, but I'm sure someone can find uses for them.

Plus, they look cool on space stations

[A_name]

I've never used them. Never had any problems.

[Laie]

Has anyone ever absolutely needed heat radiators for a mission?

Once, yes, during the Milkrun challenge. Task was to get to Minmus and back in a very short time. I relied on a large heat shield to protect me on a 7km/s return. As it turned out, the LV-Ns generated enough heat to significantly deplete my ablator from the heat shield. No amount of radiators could entirely prevent this, but a few slowed it down enough to make the mission survivable.

[Wemb]

I took them with me on my first mining rig, assuming that having bloody big drills grinding up the surface of a planet would generate substantial amounts of heat.

Then I remembered that since I was on Minmus I was probably mining mint sorbet.

Wemb

[Sharpy]

They are useful if you use LV-Ns with smaller parts. I did have a couple ships blow up to overheating from LV-N without radiators. I'm fairly sure my asteroid tug would be twice as much pain in the neck as it was (and it was a lot already!) if I didn't add the radiators ("small thermal control system") to the tiny tanks on which the LV-Ns were mounted. After a continuous burn of over an hour they showed up with orange bars. Though I'm sure standard small radiators would suffice even then.

OTOH the "Large Thermal Control System" - I doubt it's useful beyond sundiving. Really, the small radiator panels are pretty much all you need.

[Wemb]

I think I'd be very happy to see 'heat' as an analogue to life support for unmanned ships/probes - something that has to be gotten rid of, or else - in the same (but opposite) way that charge and power has to be managed. It makes sense (to me) - that anything that's consuming electrical power should be generating heat, which will need to be radiated away (either by the ship or with radiators).

Wemb

[Agost]

I think I'd be very happy to see 'heat' as an analogue to life support for unmanned ships/probes - something that has to be gotten rid of, or else - in the same (but opposite) way that charge and power has to be managed. It makes sense (to me) - that anything that's consuming electrical power should be generating heat, which will need to be radiated away (either by the ship or with radiators).

Wemb

Do you mean like the heat system inside Insterstellar mod? Also works with TAC iirc

[Frozen_Heart]

They were added as the LV-Ns produces so much heat it was difficult to do burns with them. However the LV-N heat production was nerfed when the radiators were added which made them pointless.

They look nice though.

[jondugger123]

I think I'd be very happy to see 'heat' as an analogue to life support for unmanned ships/probes - something that has to be gotten rid of, or else - in the same (but opposite) way that charge and power has to be managed. It makes sense (to me) - that anything that's consuming electrical power should be generating heat, which will need to be radiated away (either by the ship or with radiators).

Wemb

I think that's a really good idea. Could be an addition to the RO package.