What are Radiators for ?

[Acolyte]

Hi

 

Well, I started playing about a week and a half ago and approaching my 100 hour - gulp ! 

I still haven't got further than the Mun yet, but hey well.. 

I am curious about what radiators are for though, can you use them to manage re-entry or something ? Everything else seems to have a purpose, but I can't see why these are here, and I am not one to like missing out on stuff.

 

 

Edited January 25, 2017 by Acolyte

[DerekL1963]

They're for cooling the LV-N nuclear engine mostly, though they can also be useful for probes going down inside the orbit of Moho.

[Gaarst]

Yeah, cooling nukes and also cooling drills and ISRUs which generate a substantial amount of heat when several are running at the same time. I don't feel they are absolutely necessary though.

If you used them at Moho, you will want to use the deployable radiators since you'll probably absorb more heat than you extract with the fixed ones. They rely on BB radiation so they won't cool anything if facing the Sun.

Edited January 25, 2017 by Gaarst

[Benjamin Kerman]

You can use radiators to shed heat from ISRU converters and drills. This helps increase their efficiency and let you complete your drilling and converting faster. They can also be used to shed heat on the fly during reentries. 

[SpaceOdissey]

Radiators are very important for atomic engines. Because as atomic engines make nuclear power they've over heat as DerekL1963.

And they can be also used after re-entry for cool down the heat shields in space.

[Red Iron Crown]

Nuclear engines I find rarely overheat even without radiators. Only really useful for ISRU stuff, or if you are impatient to shed the heat from ascent through atmosphere.

[Acolyte]

Ok, so nothing I need to concern myself with for the next 100 hours then 

I thought maybe I was missing a trick somewhere with re-entry.

Thx guys.

[Kerbital]

So far, like others said, I only found them useful for cooling nukes, drills and ISRUs. Although, I've run Nerv engines without cooling just fine too. But the other two can overheat. Even during heavy liftoffs, if engines are going to overheat, they seem to overheat even with radiators on them. I'd rather add an engine and slow down the ascent. Seems like underutilized part.

[Kerbital]

1 hour ago, Acolyte said:

Ok, so nothing I need to concern myself with for the next 100 hours then 

I thought maybe I was missing a trick somewhere with re-entry.

Thx guys.

Regarding re-entry: I've read somewhere and found this to be true that long, shallow re-entry is the worst in terms of heat. Also, if re-enetry heat becomes too hard to manage you can change the percentage in difficulty settings.

[fourfa]

Looks like all the basics have been covered.  Question expanding on what perhaps radiators SHOULD be for - is there a lightweight mod out there for more realistic heat from command pods (electronics, environmental controls etc), solar flux, RTGs etc?  Not looking for full-on Realism Overhaul or Kerbalism packages or such, just a touch more thermal realism in space.

I've been reading lots of books on Apollo and STS lately, and heat management is a big part of real spaceflight that's just not present in KSP.

[Gaarst]

5 minutes ago, fourfa said:

Looks like all the basics have been covered.  Question expanding on what perhaps radiators SHOULD be for - is there a lightweight mod out there for more realistic heat from command pods (electronics, environmental controls etc), solar flux, RTGs etc?  Not looking for full-on Realism Overhaul or Kerbalism packages or such, just a touch more thermal realism in space.

I've been reading lots of books on Apollo and STS lately, and heat management is a big part of real spaceflight that's just not present in KSP.

Monitor you parts' temperatures during a misson. Each time one goes over 400K, unless it's an engine, you can consider it to be dead, especially internal temp. And real life has to deal with boil-off as well.

Real Heat is a nice mod that overhauls the heat system and makes it a bit more realistic. Though unless during high-speed reentry, it doesn't make that much difference with stock.

[fourfa]

Looks like RealHeat is stuck at 1.1.3?  Heat Control seems more aimed at the flaws of the 1.0/1.1 heat system, and mod nuclear reactors.  Kerbalism makes the right noises, but I'm really not looking for such a sweeping change in my game.  Maybe I'm better off just installing unnecessary radiators for my own head-canon   

[Acolyte]

9 hours ago, Kerbital said:

Regarding re-entry: I've read somewhere and found this to be true that long, shallow re-entry is the worst in terms of heat. Also, if re-enetry heat becomes too hard to manage you can change the percentage in difficulty settings.

I don't have re-entry problems as such. I am playing career, and without mods, so no delta-V calculators. Hence my rockets have either too little fuel (boom or revert) or too much, in which case I blow it off doing re-entry. So my re-entries tend to be benign (with some amusing exceptions).

I was just thinking about optimising for the future and wondered about the radiators.