SSTO Solar Panel Help

[Ulico]

I've recently dived into the world of SSTO spaceplanes. I've made multiple successful ones and went to Minmus and back with a refuel. I'm trying to go farther, so I've been experimenting with ion engines. The problem is that they need A LOT OF ELECTRIC CHARGE! I have made a spaceplane with enough DeltaV and all, but my problem I can't stop the Gigantor solar panels from blowing up from heat. No matter where I put them, they blow up. Help!

[cicatrix]

Put them in cargo bay.

[The_Rocketeer]

I can't stop the Gigantor solar panels from blowing up from heat. No matter where I put them, they blow up.

Are they blowing up during ascent or during space flight?

If space flight, I've never seen this happen, but then again the radiators are fairly new. Perhaps you need to place a radiator nearby to shed any accumulated heat.

If it's during ascent, keep in mind that the Gigantor needs to be stowed/not activated all the way to space. Secondly, unless you've mounted them in-line/end on, they generate much more drag, and this causes heat. Always mounted them so when stowed the long bar is parallel to your normal direction of travel.

[Ulico]

Thanks, I have no idea why I haven't been using a cargo bay!

[sardia]

Use the KAS attachment system mod, so you can attach them after you get to space, and stow them away when you go back. Fun times.

[capi3101]

Cargo bay is useful for a number of things - solar panel storage is one of them, and one I use extensively. They also make a dandy place to mount fore-and-aft firing RCS ports (uni-directional ports, not blocks) so long as you keep the sides of the bay clear (i.e. nothing in the line of thrust); not many other exterior surfaces on a spaceplane lend themselves readily to fore-and-aft RCS thrusters.

[tseitsei]

Cargo bay for solar panels/rtgs/fuel cells and RCS fuel and bunch of other stuff you might need...

[soulsource]

Probably I'm not telling you anythign new, but maybe, if you're playing 1.0.4, you might also have met the infamous heat bug, which causes parts with small surface thermal mass to blow up for no reason... (Of course there is a reason, and according to Ferram4 it's because the game doesn't limit the amount of heat transferred per time step, leading to numeric instabilities with small thermal mass parts.) In that case, there's Claw's Stock Bug Fix Modules, which contain a workaround for this issue as long as the small part is not inside a cargo bay...

[RocketBlam]

I don't understand. I've never had a solar panel blow up from heat generation... sounds kind of exciting, but I've never seen it. Do they generate heat?