05-18-2019, 03:04 AM
(05-18-2019, 02:00 AM)Drashner1 Wrote: I'd need to see which ships are specifically being referred to, but as a first approximation:
a) OA uses droplet radiator systems a good bit, so the radiators may be folded away when the ship is not under power and so not visible.
b) A sufficiently advanced drive in OA may use magmatter components which are effectively immune to any amount of waste heat the drive can produce, making radiators either much smaller or not needed. There is also an ongoing and occasional mention of neutrino cooling in the setting, although the canonicity and details of that is often debated.
c) OA is a project that is largely built on the evolution of ideas, including in its artwork. As such, earlier items may not include things because they weren't thought of at the time or because our conception of things has shifted and/or matured over time. Almost nothing in the setting has sprung into existence fully formed and then never had a need to be updated (those bits that appear to date from the start of the project without updating probably need it but have either been overlooked or we haven't gotten around to them yet - letting us know about an issue is usually the quickest way to resolve such a thing).
Todd
a) droplet radiators! Those are awesome things. Though, I think I've heard of this concept about 'dusty plasma' radiators that seems to be good as well, although I haven't looked into the details yet.
b) for this conversation, I'm referring only to 'near future' ships.
c) To be honest, thermodynamics isn't really a new idea, but I do admit it can easily be forgotten.
As for your question of which ship, the first thing that came to mind is the Starlark. This is a pic of it accelerating in Steve Bower's Starlark with what I assume to be an on-board drive, yet no red hot radiators were shown. Others are such as perhaps most, if not all early interstellar ships in the setting.
Unless if the OA engineers had found a way to redirect the nasty neutron away from hitting the ship early in the setting (on ToughSF's Discord server, somebody had made a concept on how to direct reaction neutron, I think it was by making sure the fusing atoms' orientation are just right, but I don't know the details), the radiator area is going to be quite big. That, and the drive has to be placed some distance away from the radiation shield.
I would've mentioned many ships from later in the timeline as well, but well, neutrino coolers. Ship designs after the early interstellar era are really beyond me.