One of the (many) real-world space travel issues Star Trek ignores (as opposed to addressing and getting wrong) is heat buildup in starships. Spacecraft have internal heat sources and must radiate it into space or eventually melt, and space accepts
heat from spacecraft by radiation very poorly. The Enterprise D and alien ships of roughly similar capabilities must generate terawatts to power their warp drives and other systems, and even given near-magical 99.99% efficiency for EVERY piece of
machinery aboard, they'd rapidly bake their crews from the accumulating waste heat, and then eventually melt.

Since the ships don't melt and the crews don't get baked, they must have some way to dump waste heat, but it's never addressed on screen or in the TMs (I don't read the non canon books). The most we get are mentions that certain subsystems like TOS
phasers and TNG movie warp cores use coolant, but no mention of where they dump their heat.

I have a half-assed idea about that, that requires little handwaving (compared to the usual level of handwaving in Trek).

Ever notice the impulse exhausts and the warp nacelles glow even on orbiting ships not actively using either system?

The impulse engines are also used to supplement main power from the MAMR so they have an excuse to glow fulltime with "non-propulsive exhaust", but not the nacelles. Yes, the MAMR running at idle produces bunches of energy but I gauge those nacelles to
be radiating megawatts of blue light. I think that glow includes waste heat collected from the whole ship being dumped overboard.

(It's blue because heat flows from hotter radiators better than from cooler ones, and their color temperature when the warp coils are energized indicates they're designed to run that hot.)

AFAIK there's absolutely no canon to back me up, but it makes sense to me.

How does heat get collected and piped to the nacelles? Plumbing of one Treknobabble sort or another.

How does low-grade heat get converted to high-energy blue photons? Damfino, but it probably involves Treknomagical crystals.

Plausible?

Obvious flaw I missed?


Mark L. Fergerson

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On 2016-11-09, nuny@bid.nes wrote:

One of the (many) real-world space travel issues Star Trek ignores
(as opposed to addressing and getting wrong) is heat buildup in
starships. Spacecraft have internal heat sources and must radiate
it into space or eventually melt, and space accepts heat from
spacecraft by radiation very poorly. The Enterprise D and alien
ships of roughly similar capabilities must generate terawatts to
power their warp drives and other systems, and even given
near-magical 99.99% efficiency for EVERY piece of machinery
aboard, they'd rapidly bake their crews from the accumulating
waste heat, and then eventually melt.

Is getting rid of waste heat a problem on real spacecraft (space
stations, &c.) now? (I'm not talking about reëntering the atmosphere,
which is a known can of worms.)


--
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On Wednesday, November 9, 2016 at 1:45:05 AM UTC-8, Adam Funk wrote:

On 2016-11-09, nuny@bid.nes wrote:

One of the (many) real-world space travel issues Star Trek ignores
(as opposed to addressing and getting wrong) is heat buildup in
starships. Spacecraft have internal heat sources and must radiate
it into space or eventually melt, and space accepts heat from
spacecraft by radiation very poorly. The Enterprise D and alien
ships of roughly similar capabilities must generate terawatts to
power their warp drives and other systems, and even given
near-magical 99.99% efficiency for EVERY piece of machinery
aboard, they'd rapidly bake their crews from the accumulating
waste heat, and then eventually melt.

Is getting rid of waste heat a problem on real spacecraft (space
stations, &c.) now? (I'm not talking about reëntering the atmosphere,
which is a known can of worms.)

Yes, it's a real-world problem on the ISS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#Power_and_thermal_control

TL;DR: Ammonia cooling loop absorbs interior heat and carries it to outside radiators. (Fluorocarbons not allowed in space?)

NASA spacesuits since before Apollo have had a sublimation cooler on the outside to reject astronaut body heat when not connected to the spacecraft's heat rejection systems:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Cooling_and_Ventilation_Garment#Space_applications


Mark L. Fergerson

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On 2016-11-10, nuny@bid.nes wrote:

On Wednesday, November 9, 2016 at 1:45:05 AM UTC-8, Adam Funk wrote:

On 2016-11-09, nuny@bid.nes wrote:

One of the (many) real-world space travel issues Star Trek ignores
(as opposed to addressing and getting wrong) is heat buildup in
starships. Spacecraft have internal heat sources and must radiate
it into space or eventually melt, and space accepts heat from
spacecraft by radiation very poorly. The Enterprise D and alien
ships of roughly similar capabilities must generate terawatts to
power their warp drives and other systems, and even given
near-magical 99.99% efficiency for EVERY piece of machinery
aboard, they'd rapidly bake their crews from the accumulating
waste heat, and then eventually melt.

Is getting rid of waste heat a problem on real spacecraft (space
stations, &c.) now? (I'm not talking about reëntering the atmosphere,
which is a known can of worms.)

Yes, it's a real-world problem on the ISS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#Power_and_thermal_control

TL;DR: Ammonia cooling loop absorbs interior heat and carries it to outside radiators. (Fluorocarbons not allowed in space?)

I didn't know that. I guess they are real radiators, unlike the
"radiators" in my house, which are really "convectors".

NASA spacesuits since before Apollo have had a sublimation cooler on the outside to reject astronaut body heat when not connected to the spacecraft's heat rejection systems:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Cooling_and_Ventilation_Garment#Space_applications

I knew about that.


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