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This one's for my brother and me. A Thermos Bottle works because heat won't travel across a vacuum, so how does a spacecraft dissapate the heat generated by equipment and people? It can't be as simple as a radiator (such as in a car) because they need airflow to work.

2006-10-13 06:55:41 · 15 answers · asked by Slut 2 in Science & Mathematics Physics

We got into this discussion watching Firefly, again.

2006-10-13 07:01:31 · update #1

15 answers

It IS as simple as a radiator. Heat can be transferred by convection, conduction or radiation. A vacuum prevents only convection and conduction. To prevent radiation you need a bright shiny surface. For that reason, the inside walls of a thermos are silvered like a mirror. To see the inside surfaces though you have to break the thermos though. Flat black is the color that radiates (and absorbs) best. A car radiator used conduction and convection more than radiation alone, so the same is a little misleading in that case.

2006-10-13 07:01:11 · answer #1 · answered by campbelp2002 7 · 0 0

SInce there is little to no breatheable air in space there MUST be an air-handling system of some kind. As such the air is conditioned, filtered and pumped back into the craft.

SInce space is a giant refrigerator, depending on what stars or planets are near by, it's a pretty straightforward manner to take residual heat from the craft's interior and just pump it into space, if that is even necessary.

The space craft woudl essentially be a warm 'body' in a vast ice bath, so it's possible the craft needs to be heated. This I don't know for sure, but the rest, is valid, whichever scenario you go with.

Hope this helps.

2006-10-13 07:16:46 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

Well what you thought about heat won't travel across space is incorrect. Otherwise how do we feel heat from the sun?
Heat travels in two different types, as a wave or particle (Such as a normal atom). The heat your thermos keeps out is the particles, since waves are not as abundant or effective farther away from the source they are, in this case the sun, etc.
To generate heat in space all that would be required was a great deal of thermal energy given up in the form of a wave.

2006-10-13 07:08:10 · answer #3 · answered by Trama!~at~The~Nightclub!!!!!!!!! 2 · 0 0

The Space Shuttle has to keep the bay doors open while orbiting because that's where the radiators are. They keep those radiators pointed out into space. The electronics running on board generate quite a bit of heat that has to be disposed of.

2006-10-13 10:42:28 · answer #4 · answered by sojsail 7 · 0 0

Thermal radiation travels much like light in space. Another trick the astronauts use is to put the capsule into what they call rotesory mode. A slow rotation equalizes the heat all over the ship. In the sun side it is about 300 deg. f. and in the shady side it is about -250 deg. F.

2006-10-13 10:51:32 · answer #5 · answered by JOHNNIE B 7 · 0 0

radiation.

ever heard of infra-red binoculars? they see the electro-magnetic waves, of a wavelength slightly below the visible red (hence the name), that all warm bodies emit.

but nothing is free (at least in physics) and when you emit this radiation it means you're losing energy. In this case, heat.

basically what happens is that hotter atoms vibrate more, and they emit an infra-red photon and after that they vibrate less.

same in space


now of course, conduction cannot happen in space. conduction is when a hot milieu is in contact with a colder one, and the vibrating elements of the hotter milieus transfer energy to the colder one, thereby losing part of their initial energy, i.e. cooling off.

convection is the same thing. But conduction is used when the two milieus are solid. and convection is used when at least one can flow (such as the air around the radiator of a car)


Hope this helps

2006-10-13 07:16:41 · answer #6 · answered by AntoineBachmann 5 · 0 0

Heat does travel accross a vacuum. Just not as well. Heat travels through a vacuum via photons. The same way light or radio waves do.

2006-10-13 09:55:18 · answer #7 · answered by Nomadd 7 · 0 0

by way of fact they have been able to take extremely measurements and the measurements indicated that extra warmth radiates back into area than the international Warming fashions predicted. This of direction demonstrates that Carbon Dioxide isn't as useful at protecting in warmth by way of fact the kind shows making all of the cries approximately carbon footprint invalid.

2016-10-16 04:02:31 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

By radiative heat loss. Actually keeping warm can more of a problem because, if the sun is behind the earth, cooling can be very dramatic by radiative loss

2006-10-13 07:29:49 · answer #9 · answered by andyoptic 4 · 0 0

The sun radiates heat through space- if it didn't, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

2006-10-13 07:04:57 · answer #10 · answered by morlock825 4 · 1 0

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