• Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
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    14 days ago

    Air-conditioning is pretty power intensive

    Even that should still be minuscle compared to getting rid of the waste heat from a huge antimatter reactor.
    Feels like trying to get your Ferrari faster by switching of the cockpit instrument illumination. Not even worth giving the command.

    • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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      14 days ago

      How does transferring heat out of a ship work? On the one hand, it’s really cold in space, but on the other, there’s no substrate to absorb and transfer the heat.

      • Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
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        14 days ago

        From a thermodynamical standpoint, the whole Enterprise is something of a mess.

        But, hey, if you already have a “Heisenberg-Compensator”, also having a “Boltzmann-Compensator” is probably not that implausible… ;-)

          • alpine_jim@piefed.social
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            14 days ago

            It is, yes. A large fraction (about a quarter?) of what looks like solar panels on the ISS are actually dedicated radiator panels. The solar panels are angled to face the sun, and the radiators are angled at 90 degrees from the sun, to face empty space.

          • plantfanatic@sh.itjust.works
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            14 days ago

            Inefficient is maybe the right word? If you have more stuff to absorb the radiation I believe you can transfer it faster. So maybe tethering and tossing asteroids or something could be viable?