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Post by greydove on Sept 10, 2019 15:21:26 GMT
Is there a mod for COADE where coolant can be ejected into space bypassing radiators. For example a ship in combat can close its radiators to protect them while ejecting coolant/propellant to cool lasers or some other system.
In the novel Hegemony they describe warships venting coolant:("...the Conquering Sun's radiator spines were glowing with waste heat and the huge ship was venting streams of super-heated coolant to keep the lasers from overheating.")
Are there any obvious disadvantages doing that or is just not practical.
Sorry for broken English and thank you in advance.
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ghgh
Full Member
Still trying to make kinetics work.
Posts: 136
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Post by ghgh on Sept 10, 2019 16:52:20 GMT
I mean.... the reactors and rockets both have coolant, at least in the case of the NTR. Ejecting it out of a reactor is inefficient, you would need to store, expend, and waste coolant as opposed to using just the right amount like in a closed system with radiators. An NTR essentially uses the propellant as a coolant. Any government or corporation using that method would have a crew-cooking weakness in that they would rely on an additional resource outside of propellant, food, and ammo. Even if you have some sort of super lightweight coolant with an absurdly high boiling point, it's one more stop to make, one more material to mine, one more factor tied to the economy to and open to sabotage. As far as I can tell, the only mods on steam are for new materials/reactions, and language mods.
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Post by walterscientist on Sept 10, 2019 18:15:12 GMT
As far as I know most cooling systems would pump around as little medium as possible as fast as possible. That means thermal capacity of the coolant is re-used over and over. Dumping the coolant after heating it up once would be extremely wasteful in comparison and you would need fairly large coolant tanks for it to be of any use. There is no straightforward way how to mod this into the game.
In regard to real world - what I think might be worth considering is to dump your waste heat into your propellant. That way you would not need tanks for extra coolant and more importantly would not need radiators - saving a lot mass and bulk. A decently sized ship can have thousands of tons of propellant - its thermal capacity is enormous. I don't see any particular reason why such approach wouldn't work.
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Post by greydove on Sept 11, 2019 12:31:24 GMT
Thank you.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Sept 11, 2019 17:48:22 GMT
One good reason for ejecting coolant is when your heat rejection system doubles as combat maneuvering drive.
It's quite plausible you might want to jink at the same time as you're firing your energy hungry weapons.
Of course you'd still want radiators, but you might then keep them folded as long as you expect to be jinking.
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Post by airc777 on Sept 12, 2019 4:24:36 GMT
One good reason for ejecting coolant is when your heat rejection system doubles as combat maneuvering drive. It's quite plausible you might want to jink at the same time as you're firing your energy hungry weapons. Of course you'd still want radiators, but you might then keep them folded as long as you expect to be jinking. I propose: Water NTR main drive, hydrogen cooling loops, hydrolox emergency thrusters and missiles, having several redundant reserves of oxygen for re-pressurizing the crew compartment, tankers just hauling water ice.
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Post by Rocket Witch on Sept 12, 2019 16:46:23 GMT
This isn't possible to mod, no.
Martin Marietta once came up with an open-cycle laser platform design called Zenith Star. Nothing appears to have been noted about the operational lifetime, but this could be extrapolated from the known data (below).
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Sept 12, 2019 17:55:39 GMT
That's 4 orders of magnitude apart. |
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Post by bigbombr on Sept 13, 2019 6:57:42 GMT
Open cycle cooling is excellent for short time durations, which is why it was considered for SDI. Spacecraft in the game Delta-v: rings of Saturn also use open cycle cooling, but that isn't an issue because they tend to operate for short times and with lower electricity output than many of our CoaDE combat spacecraft.
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Post by Rocket Witch on Sept 13, 2019 21:39:36 GMT
That's 4 orders of magnitude apart. I'm not sure what that's about. The quote is from a brief mention of the ZS at projectrho. I guess a typo, like the second number was meant to be for meters instead of centimeters. |
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Sept 13, 2019 23:20:29 GMT
That's 4 orders of magnitude apart. I'm not sure what that's about. The quote is from a brief mention of the ZS at projectrho. I guess a typo, like the second number was meant to be for meters instead of centimeters. The first one being MW/m 2 would fit the second one. |
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