Post by n2maniac on May 6, 2017 3:01:43 GMT
So, two things I see come up every now and then are heat pumps and superconductors. I would argue these should go together:
Superconductors need cooling to below 80K, and for reasonable current densities (the only real reason we would use them in CDE) need to be much lower (<20K). Radiator area is impractical for this when considering the warmth from nearby ship components, but pumping this up to 100s of K is not an unreasonable power burden.
Thoughts from others in the community?
I can't actually think of a way to prototype this ingame. Presumably the heat pump would have to appear as a radiator to a module, but consume electricity to operate and also need a rejection radiator. Superconductors could almost be a low-melting material (treating melting point as critical temperature), but the heat sources would need tweaking and the treatment of voltage and current may break things.
Superconductors need cooling to below 80K, and for reasonable current densities (the only real reason we would use them in CDE) need to be much lower (<20K). Radiator area is impractical for this when considering the warmth from nearby ship components, but pumping this up to 100s of K is not an unreasonable power burden.
Thoughts from others in the community?
I can't actually think of a way to prototype this ingame. Presumably the heat pump would have to appear as a radiator to a module, but consume electricity to operate and also need a rejection radiator. Superconductors could almost be a low-melting material (treating melting point as critical temperature), but the heat sources would need tweaking and the treatment of voltage and current may break things.