a new idea on the expense of heating

[Danya333]

Hello, I have an idea about the heating in orbit of kerbine and the expense of radiators !!!

I have a question. in orbit the ships heat up? Yes, even on the ship of Gagarin EAST-1 there were radiators for cooling !!!

And in the game, do the ships heat up in orbit? no! I suggest that in the settings of complexity it is possible to include heating in orbit, but a weak heating. And more so that the heating affects the productivity of the part. and more than the heating index should be made on the button!

[sumghai]

[MOD - Moved to Suggestions & Development Discussion subforums, as this is regarding proposed changes to the stock game]

[The Aziz]

Were you ever in orbit close to the sun? Well, there is heating, it's just that it's not significant anymore even as close to the sun as around Moho. There was a thread about that I believe, with lots of maths and scientific calculations regarding heating and all related stuff. You'd need to change something in in-game physics to get what you want.

Edited September 29, 2018 by The Aziz

[Kernel Kraken]

On 9/29/2018 at 2:43 AM, Danya333 said:

Hello, I have an idea about the heating in orbit of kerbine and the expense of radiators !!!

I have a question. in orbit the ships heat up? Yes, even on the ship of Gagarin EAST-1 there were radiators for cooling !!!

And in the game, do the ships heat up in orbit? no! I suggest that in the settings of complexity it is possible to include heating in orbit, but a weak heating. And more so that the heating affects the productivity of the part. and more than the heating index should be made on the button!

I believe the radiators were mainly for engine heat, but I may be mistaken. It would be neat if they made engines heat up the entire ship on harder difficulties, though.

If you want real orbital heat try orbiting at 50,000 meters up...

[Danya333]

it is clear, but it is just a shame that the radiators are there and they are almost not used, but the engines, although they heat up so little...

[Rocket In My Pocket]

I'm not against a stock-alike compromise.

The radiators are fairly under used to be honest.

What about a very, very slow build up of heat when in space? We don't need excessive heating that would affect your average trip to like the Mun or Minmus, but vessels in space for extended periods or space stations for instance might need a few radiators to combat the eventual, slow build up of heat. (I'm talking more on the scale of months/years than hours or days.)

[Blasty McBlastblast]

I would also like to see radiators become more important in game! 

Perhaps additional part heat could be generated for each unit of electrical power consumed? Power consumption for crewed parts (call it "environmental control systems") could then be increased until an enjoyable game balance is found.

Suddenly we would have an excuse for large radiators on stations, and to build antennas away from heat sensitive areas! 

[Gaarst]

You radiate heat back into space when you receive sunlight, eventually your temperature will move to an equilibrium where the heat you radiate is equal to the heat you receive from the Sun. At Earth/Kerbin (they have the same solar irradiance) the "worst case scenario", a surface that somehow only radiates towards the Sun (like something with terrible internal heat conduction) settles at 400 K, a long cylinder facing the Sun sideways stabilises around 300 K.

I haven't actually tried this, but get a spacecraft at an orbit where it is always facing the Sun let it sit for a while (don't use a ton of parts if you don't want to wait for ages) and look at the temperature of the parts facing the Sun. You should get something between 300 and 400 K, if not then I'm probably an idiot and disregard what I'm saying.

IRL, for a manned spacecraft anything over 300 K starts being a concern for the crew (and electronics at higher temperatures). In KSP neither your craft or Kerbals care about anything below 2000 K so having radiators is useless.

Edited October 13, 2018 by Gaarst

[panzer1b]

While im 100% AGAINST any sort of long term heat buildup, i do agree that radiators are now useless ever since they changed something (i believe it was 1.1 where it happened) to make engines nolonger create any noticeable heat. 

 

While it was a challenge, i especially liked that back in 1.0 the nukes would create a crazy amount of heat when clustered and they would easily cook your ship if you tried a long burn without proper cooling.  I really hate how that was removed from stock as it gave the nuke, an otherwise overpowered engine that renders every other one useless for interplanetary (high mass and low TWR doesnt mean squat when you have over twice the ISP of anything that isnt ion and dont try to land them on tylo). 

 

Actually, im gonna go find my old 1.0 backup and try to make the current nukes behave like the old ones, with enough internal heat gen to cook a ship that uses them for extended durations without radiators.  I can totally understand why they changed it to current (many people were moaning about having a challenging mechanic added that made their game harder to play casually), but i still think that engine heat needs to be severely increased especially for nukes, since they have 0 other downsides to their use when i can slap one on any ship and burn it for 30 minutes straight with no noticeable heat issues.

[Frozen_Heart]

Heat used to be a noticeable problem and we had no radiator parts to solve the issue either.

 

Then they added radiators and at the same time made heating basically not a thing in game, removing the purpose for the part they added in the same patch.

[AVaughan]

In stock radiators are still needed for drills and ISRU.

Also when talking about realism, remember that in Apollo 13 the capsule got cold because the heaters were turned off to save power.  ie Apollo 13 was radiating away more heat than it was absorbing from the sun.  (Possibly it reached an equilibrium, but that equilibrium was colder than the designers/astronauts would have liked).  So whilst heat management is something spacecraft designers need to design for, they don't always need to add radiators.

[magnemoe]

17 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

I'm not against a stock-alike compromise.

The radiators are fairly under used to be honest.

What about a very, very slow build up of heat when in space? We don't need excessive heating that would affect your average trip to like the Mun or Minmus, but vessels in space for extended periods or space stations for instance might need a few radiators to combat the eventual, slow build up of heat. (I'm talking more on the scale of months/years than hours or days.)

One problem with heat is how it don't work well during warp or then ship is not loaded. Very visible with mining. Fill up an tanker and then its on its way home you jump back to base and its glowing.