I don't know what I've been told..
@stux its just a few kelvins near earth. somethng like -270 C
re: I don't know what I've been told..
@freemo That's bloody damn cold if you ask me brrr
re: I don't know what I've been told..
@stux I do suggest a sweater and scarf yes :)
Interesting fact, despite being super cold it is rather tricky to cool things in space... cause physics :)
re: I don't know what I've been told..
@freemo Not gonna cut it
Ah yes true! The heat cannot go anywhere! You know.. now air and shizzle or other transport vroom vroom
re: I don't know what I've been told..
@stux well you can still get the heat off of things. But you are limited to one of the three heat transfer methods, radiation. Ther eis no convection or conduction.
re: I don't know what I've been told..
You can also evaporate something (but only as long as you have something to evaporate). Surprisingly many spacecraft used evaporative cooling at least sometimes (Gemini had an evaporator that seemed to have been used at low flow continuously, Apollo LM was cooled purely by evaporation, Apollo CSM had an evaporator to allow higher heat rejection rates than by radiators alone and as the sole way to dispose of heat after the SM was gone, Shuttle had an evaporator to cover high heat load intervals and, I assume, to help in the case the payload doors won't open).
re: I don't know what I've been told..
Actually I forgot one "spacecraft": Apollo portable life support backpack used a sublimator. I _think_ all the spacecraft I mentioned previously used evaporators, but am less sure than previously (esp. about the LM, which had to support very low power levels). Funnily enough, in some cases the evaporator (or the steam piping from it) actually had an electrical heater to prevent freezing.
Apollo CSM, late Gemini, and Shuttle had an overabundance of water (because they were powered by hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells), but that water had to be condensed from steam first, so the evaporator was essentially part of "negative heat storage" system. Apollo LM was constrained to a very short period of operation by many other constraints (e.g. the descent engine would become inoperable IIRC 72h after it was first used, and something like a week after launch).