Comment by jupp0r
3 hours ago
Wouldn't this be solved like similar problems on earth by making small structures with large surface areas?
3 hours ago
Wouldn't this be solved like similar problems on earth by making small structures with large surface areas?
I don't think so. Large surface area helps with convective cooling I think by increasing the surface area that participates in heat exchange with the air (or other thermally conducting material), radiative cooling wouldn't benefit from this because you can't concentrate light beyond the source that it's emitted from (etendue).
Though I do wonder if it would be possible to have some kind of internal heat pump driven by electrical power to juice up the temperature of the radiators to increase the power being radiated away? E.g., run a heat pump to increase the temperature of a working fluid and then run high temperature radiators? I think it would work and I don't immediately see that it would violate the laws of thermodynamics? (this is ignoring all practically, I'm sure the engineering would be devilishly hard, although if you're already shooting for the moon you might as well throw in some artificial gravity to boot, it's not like the robots get motion sickness)
You can use heatpumps to increase radiator temperature but then you need a heatpump and need to power it. But the principle is sound.