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Heat Disposal on ships

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Heat Disposal on ships
Post by DerHenker   » Thu Apr 13, 2017 3:04 pm

DerHenker
Midshipman

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First thiongs First,
I'm new on this forum, but I love the books. I have read all the Honorverse Books and most of Safehold.

A Friend of mine and I have been thinking about a problem, which I have not found an Answer to.

The problem is the heat disposal on space ships. It have to go somewhere, but you can't dispose the heat of the reactor into space. Yes I know heating the interiors of the ship but at some point you have to get rid of the excess heat from the reactor and the electrical systems.

Maybe someone can bring a little light on that topic for me, because most of the tech in the honorverse does make actual sense and is very well thought about.

best regards,
DerHenker
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Re: Heat Disposal on ships
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu Apr 13, 2017 3:57 pm

Jonathan_S
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DerHenker wrote:First thiongs First,
I'm new on this forum, but I love the books. I have read all the Honorverse Books and most of Safehold.

A Friend of mine and I have been thinking about a problem, which I have not found an Answer to.

The problem is the heat disposal on space ships. It have to go somewhere, but you can't dispose the heat of the reactor into space. Yes I know heating the interiors of the ship but at some point you have to get rid of the excess heat from the reactor and the electrical systems.

Maybe someone can bring a little light on that topic for me, because most of the tech in the honorverse does make actual sense and is very well thought about.

best regards,
DerHenker
Heat is one area that's not all that well thought out.
Eventually after enough people bugged him about it David Weber said that ships can dump heat into the Aloha wall [edit: Alpha wall] (or by extension whatever the next higher hyper band wall is) through their wedge (or sails).

Which is in effect that he's just not going to try to find real world methods.

Much later in the series (I'll be as generic as I can to avoid possible spoilers) we see a stealth design that concentrates and "beams" the waste heat away in a narrow beam to avoid overheating while sneaking through without an active wedge.
Last edited by Jonathan_S on Thu Apr 13, 2017 4:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Heat Disposal on ships
Post by Duckk   » Thu Apr 13, 2017 3:59 pm

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Aloha wall


I have to admit, I giggled. ;)
-------------------------
Shields at 50%, taunting at 100%! - Tom Pope
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Re: Heat Disposal on ships
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu Apr 13, 2017 4:02 pm

Jonathan_S
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Location: Virginia, USA

Duckk wrote:
Aloha wall


I have to admit, I giggled. ;)

:D
Stupid phone autocorrect - you'd think as much as I post here it would have learned "Alpha wall"


But hey, Aloha wall works too. You have to say Aloha to it every time you want to enter or leave a system ;)
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Re: Heat Disposal on ships
Post by kzt   » Thu Apr 13, 2017 7:31 pm

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Which has the minor probllem of not explaining how recon drones, ships in orbit, and missiles in ballistic segments don't melt.
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Re: Heat Disposal on ships
Post by Daryl   » Thu Apr 13, 2017 9:00 pm

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Much as I love the series, heat disposal is just one of the unique physics attributes of the Honorverse. Accellerating a 6 megaton SD at 450 gs/s requires absurd amounts of energy that comes from wedge technology, could never come from a nuclear fusion reactor. Essentially a perpetual motion machine plus.
In Flag in Exile he talks about bombarding installations with 0.99C missiles. I'm too rusty to do the maths but under relativity a 100 ton missile at that speed would be much heavier with the mass coming from E=MC2, so a lot of energy.
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Re: Heat Disposal on ships
Post by MaxxQ   » Thu Apr 13, 2017 9:20 pm

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BuNine

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Location: Greer, South Carolina USA

DerHenker wrote:First thiongs First,
I'm new on this forum, but I love the books. I have read all the Honorverse Books and most of Safehold.

A Friend of mine and I have been thinking about a problem, which I have not found an Answer to.

The problem is the heat disposal on space ships. It have to go somewhere, but you can't dispose the heat of the reactor into space. Yes I know heating the interiors of the ship but at some point you have to get rid of the excess heat from the reactor and the electrical systems.

Maybe someone can bring a little light on that topic for me, because most of the tech in the honorverse does make actual sense and is very well thought about.

best regards,
DerHenker


Disregarding real-world physics - there's enough of other people saying it doesn't work in the Honorverse elsewhere in this thread - we at BuNine have a couple of methods based on what David said (as mentioned above).

If you go to the Deviant Art link in my sig, you can see several RMN ships that I've modeled. The big black panels mounted ventrally and dorsally are radiators. The Rolly Things™ behind the "conning tower" (not really what it is, we just call it that) are the heat sumps that dump the heat into the wedge/Alpha wall.

You can take it or leave it as an explanation, but I will say that I haven't seen anyone here doing the complaining write a completely physics-accurate, but also entertaining science-fiction book. :mrgreen:
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Re: Heat Disposal on ships
Post by DerHenker   » Fri Apr 14, 2017 3:38 am

DerHenker
Midshipman

Posts: 3
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Thank you for the fast answers.

I think my hunger for knowledge is stilled.
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Re: Heat Disposal on ships
Post by DerHenker   » Fri Apr 14, 2017 3:41 am

DerHenker
Midshipman

Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 2:54 pm

kzt wrote:Which has the minor probllem of not explaining how recon drones, ships in orbit, and missiles in ballistic segments don't melt.


ships in orbit could dissipate the heat into the ionosphere of the planet which they are orbiting. Missiles in ballistic segments won't be in ballistic for too long probably.
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Re: Heat Disposal on ships
Post by kzt   » Fri Apr 14, 2017 4:01 am

kzt
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Location: Albuquerque, NM

DerHenker wrote:
kzt wrote:Which has the minor probllem of not explaining how recon drones, ships in orbit, and missiles in ballistic segments don't melt.


ships in orbit could dissipate the heat into the ionosphere of the planet which they are orbiting. Missiles in ballistic segments won't be in ballistic for too long probably.

Say 2 minutes, with an exawatt fusion reactor running. How hot will a 150 ton missile get when the incredibly efficient reactor radiates a mere gigawatt a second into the missile body? Assume it's all made of iron to make this easier.

It takes 450j to heat up a kg of iron 1C. So it takes about 70 MW to heat up the missile by 1 degree c. So with a gw a second in waste heat in 2 minutes the missile will be 1700 degrees warmer than it was at the start.

Oh, and at 1700C it's radiating blue-white light, so that might impact tracking and such.
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