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Post by cuddlefish on Oct 19, 2016 6:09:37 GMT
I had a thought, and I figured I'd moot it here, see what folks think.
So, radiators need to be at the output temperature of the coolant loop. If they got hotter, they'd be dumping heat into the coolant, not extracting it.
So... when radiators get heated to extreme temperatures by nuking, shouldn't that have serious ramifications on the modules they service?
I mean, I know the Crew Module radiators have to be very cold (by radiator standards) to keep hospitable temperatures for the crews with the current layouts.
So, if the 293k radiator for a crew module gets nuked such that it's yellow-white hot... shouldn't that lead to the crew broiling, or something equally nasty? Right now ships seem to be able to shrug that off and return to baseline temp - is that accurate?
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Post by goduranus on Oct 19, 2016 12:10:24 GMT
I've been wondering the same thing. I think those radiators don't carry much heat in them, so if they get nuked, they can be temporarily shut down while they cool off a bit.
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Post by qswitched on Oct 20, 2016 9:08:58 GMT
I had a thought, and I figured I'd moot it here, see what folks think. So, radiators need to be at the output temperature of the coolant loop. If they got hotter, they'd be dumping heat into the coolant, not extracting it. So... when radiators get heated to extreme temperatures by nuking, shouldn't that have serious ramifications on the modules they service? I mean, I know the Crew Module radiators have to be very cold (by radiator standards) to keep hospitable temperatures for the crews with the current layouts. So, if the 293k radiator for a crew module gets nuked such that it's yellow-white hot... shouldn't that lead to the crew broiling, or something equally nasty? Right now ships seem to be able to shrug that off and return to baseline temp - is that accurate? The effect is not nearly so severe. A radiator that is much hotter than its supposed to dumps out heat to the fourth power. Almost all of the heat is lost very quickly. Additionally, it's a thin surface layer of heated material, not the whole radiator. Radiators should visually fade from their yellow-white hot 'damaged' appearance in seconds, however this feature had to be cut because it was a major performance problem. |
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Post by normalitybytes on Oct 21, 2016 22:07:24 GMT
In a similar vein, does the radiation of a nearby nuke send insufficiently shielded powerplants into supercriticality?
My pre-106 fleet killer nukes seemed to take out all powerplants, but that might have been due to primary effects.
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Post by qswitched on Oct 22, 2016 0:44:10 GMT
In a similar vein, does the radiation of a nearby nuke send insufficiently shielded powerplants into supercriticality? My pre-106 fleet killer nukes seemed to take out all powerplants, but that might have been due to primary effects. I estimated that this effect would not be very significant, so it was not implemented. Modern reactors are designed so that an unplanned increase in temperature beyond safe limits (such as caused by an influx of neutrons) immediately kills the neutron reproduction rate, and thus shuts down the reactor safely. Regardless, if you can detonate a nuke close enough to cause fatal damage from neutrons only, you are likely close enough to cause fatal damage from the nuclear blast. |
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