Fairing not protecting contents during asecnt

[Death Engineering]

This simple, early career rocket has a 1.25m fairing over the pod and instruments. During ascent on 1.0.4, the radiators are fully chill. No problem. With 1.0.5, they get to full heat-bar very early, as if they were not aero-occluded.

[r_rolo1]

AFAIK as I understand , it is not that the radiator is heating from the atmo in 1.0.5, it is the fact that in 1.0.4 radiators could radiate to the outside while inside a fairing ( a thing that, if you think it right, doesn't make much sense ). In 1.0.5 the radiator is trying to dissipate the heat generated by the fairing friction with the atmo , but it can't do it because it is enclosed, so it heats up. If you staged up the fairing , the radiator would most likely cool down ASAP.

[Death Engineering]

Interesting.. eager to try later. If that is the case, and what you're saying makes sense, how does one get a radiator into space? Only outside of a fairing?

[r_rolo1]

Well, if you're putting it outside, you're probably going to make it worse due to added drag

P.S I do not know if this is 100% true. That is how it was explained to me during a twitch stream of one of the KSP-TV regulars. But it would make sense

P.S II From what I heard from NathanKell in one of the previous weekend KSP-TV streams, the passive radiators ( like the one you have in here ) will only draw heat from up to two parts away ( in other words , from the part they are attached to and the parts that are attached to that one ). Maybe the best solution is simply to put more parts in between the fairing base and the radiator?

Edited November 12, 2015 by r_rolo1

[Death Engineering]

I don't even know if a radiator was needed, TBH. I just slapped it on there because the first time I launched the pod got a little toasty, but eventually cooled. Will update with test results l8r....

edit:

1) Same rocket, jettisoned fairing once it was nice and toasty: stayed hot/got hotter - did not cool down.

2) Same rocket, moved the radiators several parts away from the fairing root-part: radiators still over-heated.

I'm not sure what's up, but I don't think it's working as planned.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Death Engineering

[sal_vager]

Actually it might be, although I agree it's not the same behavior as from 1.0.4, a lot was changed with radiators so we can't expect them to be the same.

The static radiators, like the folding radiators now, will actually draw extra heat from hot parts rather than just match their heat, allowing them to actively cool, or refrigerate, the vessel instead of just getting as hot as the hottest part.

Also, the folding radiators can draw heat from anywhere on the vessel but only when unfolded, and they consume E/C while they do so.

The static radiators are "on" all the time, don't need E/C, but can now actively draw heat from their parent part, and from the parent of that part, and all its children, basically two parts in every "direction".

So they can suck up heat from the fairing directly if they are two parts away, and even if they aren't, they can draw heat from other parts as it conducts in.

They won't overheat though, all radiators have a saturation point where they can't take in any more heat, this is so they won't explode.

But there is a bug here, or more accurately an omission, in that the radiators are not disabled when checked for occlusion by fairings or cargobays, some other parts aren't either such as the fixed solar panel and the rover wheels.

So they will continue to function even when they and other parts around them are occluded.

Other aspects of the radiators such as exposure to airflow will be blocked while stowed, so they won't contribute to drag, they'll just be sucking in heat when you don't expect them to.

Also if you could add this to the bug tracker that'd be great

[Darth Lazarus]

I experienced something similar. but i think, that this is more of a passive radiator bug. i submited a bugtracker report for this case.