If a space ship were in deep space between the stars, whould the surface of this ship be frozen?

Question

I see many movies like star wars, aliens, star trek, etc... just to name a few, traveling into deep space from one star to the other. They allways look clean, free of ice, is this true or would these space ship be covered in a thick layer of ice?, since they are so far away from any external heat source.
Don't know if space ships need to generate heat on the out side to make them look like in the movies.
I know the space shuttle has to rotate towards the sun in order to keep the shuttle from freezing on the dark side.

Answer 1

The outside surface of the skin of a spacecraft in deep space would be dictated by thermodynamics.

1. It will lose heat due entirely to radiation according to the Stefan-Boltzman Law

The total amount of radiation emitted by the spacecraft to its temperature above the background temperature of space (about 3 K -- near absolute zero).

E=k*T^4
where:
- k = Stefan-Boltzman constant
- T is the temperature difference, and for all practical purposes is the temperature of the outside of the spacecraft.
- NOTE: this assumes that the spacecraft skin 'looks' like a 'blackbody'.

Other factors can make this process more or less efficient (make the spacecraft look more or less like a blackbody), i.e. painting the outside white or black, using metal foils that radiate/absorb only certain wavelengths, etc.

2. It will gain heat generated inside the spacecraft being conducted and convected to the outside skin and through the skin material.

If the heat coming from the inside is greater than the heat radiating off into space, then the temperature will be greater than the background temperature of space (3 K).

Ideally you want to keep the outside temperature warm enough to keep metal joints from failing (due to expansion/contraction), yet not too warm that you are wasting valuable power from whatever power generating system you have.

Sometimes waste heat generated from electronics is sufficient to keep the outside from not getting too cold. Sometimes that waste heat is too much, and must be purposely radiated away using efficient (near-blackbody) radiators. Sometimes the waste heat from electronics and other internal sources is not enough, so electric heaters must be used to keep the spacecraft from getting too cold.
.

Answer 2

To have ice form on the outside, you'd need water. In deep space, there are particles of hydrogen (about 1 per cubic meter), but not much else.

The shuttle doesn't rotate; it has cooling panels inside the bay doors (which is why they open them upon achieving orbit), regardless if anything is in the bay or not). The Apollo lunar missions rotated about once every 2 minutes or so, so they could be evenly heated, but the shuttle doesn't do that.

Answer 3

you need water to form ice and their isn't any water in deep space, so the surface would be cold but no ice would form.

Also the shuttle isn't turning to heat itself up it is actually fitted with radiators inside the cargo bay doors that are designed to vent the heat from all the equipment in the shuttle into space. These are pointed away from the sun since direct sunlight would heat them up, rather than cooling the equipment.

Answer 4

The space sip Apollo 13 had an oxygen tank explode when they left from the atmosphere causing it to sut off all electric devices in the shuttle causing the heat to drop and being so close to the moon made it freezing in the shuttle which made the windows fog up and if they spent longer out there tthan yes the shuttle would be covered with ice.

Answer 5

The skin temperature would be near absolute zero. And no it will not ice up. Where would the moisture come from.