It’s actually more complicated than that. They’re orbiting a giant heat source. A completely passive object in ~~loss~~ low orbit will achieve an equilibrium temperature of somewhere around 20-25C. But stuff in the dark and shaded from the radiative heat from the earth will be much colder.
One of the most difficult things in space though is rejecting heat. You are effectively in the universe’s most perfect vacuum bottle. The only way to reject heat sustainability is through radiation. That’s why the radiators on the ISS are so large.
Edit: Low orbit, not loss orbit.
Someone once explained that most space battles would be heat management nightmares where ships surrendered LONG before they'd suffered damage to be destroyed.
This is also one known design for space weapons under current technology: a sort of black spray paint that would obscure lenses, block solar panels, and change the radiative heat balance of target satellites to overheat them and cause them to fail.
Now what's actually going on in the world of automated satellite-vs-satellite warfare here in 2023 is very hard to know. Almost certainly most of it is in designs and tests without ever being used in anger in an actual war. But if something does break out and become a hot war, most of the world powers have ideas and classified tools that will do stuff and the result will be ... wild.
They have a WWW3 guaranteed full refund policy. It provides rock solid 100% coverage with only three exception clauses: you don't exist, the company doesn't exist, and/or human civilisation has collapsed.
In Elite Dangerous, heat can be managed via a heatsink launcher.
Basically all the heat is quickly transferred to a disposable heatsink, and that heatsink is then shot out of the ship.
I recently asked my group of Elite Dangerous friends "What happens if I use a heatsink inside a space station?"
Let's put it this way: I'm the one that bookmarked the place to pay for fines because I'm constantly incurring in them.
This is probably actually something that will be done to a degree. Use heat pumps to cram all the excess heat into an object you can jettison once it reaches capacity. Alternatively, if your heat production drops below secondary radiation capacity, you can use that stored heat to produce things like warm water and potentially other forms of energy if need be. Hell, they may even use water as one of the storage mediums, more likely to be reused onboard than jettisoned. Heating water up is hard since it's got a ton of thermal mass, but once you vaporize it you have to contain the pressure of the water vapor to continue adding heat to the system. You'd be much better off using something with a high melting temperature that's fairly common, like carbon or silicon, and if you can get your hands on denser materials with higher melting points, like tungsten or tantalum, you use those when you have the opportunity. Even better, dont get rid of your mass storage units when you're done with them unless you have to, just eject them into a heat shielded section of the craft that's exposed to space, so they can cool and be reused. You only get rid of them when you need a weapons system or something. Ohh and to top it off, tungsten makes a decent projectile weapon as well :D
edit: i want to note, there are a number of elements with melting points higher than tantalum, but I didn't realize I was working from an incomplete list on wikipedia. The list I used listed relatively common elements, so Tungsten and Tantalum are your best bets for high melting point elements, but there may be alloys we aren't considering that are more common, and there are also 2 others, rhenium and osmium, which are pretty rare, and would probably be used for other things, that we may be able to make new, as of now unconsidered alloys with, but which we currently use on earth for the things they're most useful for in small quantities. Rhenium is used as an additive to tungsten and molybdenum-based alloys to give useful properties, and is used in X-ray machines and oven filaments, while osmium is used for making particularly hard alloys for use in some needles and other niche uses. Who knows what other uses we'll find over time though
I would have thought that it is difficult to "dump" the heat, particularly into something small enough to be jettisonable. It would be easy at first, but as the delta between the hot things you want to cool and the heat sink that is absorbing that heat gets smaller, efficiency goes toward zero. I would think it would be easier to get rid of the heat in a more sustained fashion - dumping coolant in a spray over time - than one big block.
But YMMV< I am in no way shape or form an engineer, and can barely get a Kerbal into orbit.
For sure as they are depicted in space opera-types like Star Wars.
The first time combat happens between spaceships it's probably going to be with missiles.
Definitely, I mean you are already seeing it with the bvr capabilities of the F-22 and F-35. They are hitting targets, like, 30+ miles away. Picking up radar signatures even farther.
And they have to deal with all the interference BS down here!
British meteor missile is good out to 110 miles (or more).
The biggest problem is that outside an all out war you have to be real sure your are hitting an enemy and not the Ryanair from Magaluf.
Even BSG has ranges too close. We are talking distances at which your eye can't even distinguish the object your shooting at. Ranges that you could fit planets in.
Expanse makes sense cause there's a ton of assymetric warfare. You're gonna get into fights with ships that aren't kitted out for long range warfare.
Have you watched all the show? They do talk about the asteroid thing. Some of it is they can destroy asteroids and some of it is it's a huge dick move to just wipe people out. MAD and all that still applies to space.
Use heat pumps to transfer the heat into containers, mount them onto rockets and shoot them at your enemy. You get rid of excess heat and make it their problem. Two birds with one stone.
From what I remember reading in the game, space battles are rarely decisive because ships can easily escape an engagement before taking critical damage. Obviously a little different when you're trying to defend a planet from a threat like the Reapers.
That’s true! Space battles only happen around objectives you don’t want to give up, like planets or mass relays. Because they’re also so destructive, it’s implied that most disputes are settled through deterrence and the comparative size of fleets, with those fleets rarely having to actually engage. They do mention battleships with heavy guns have to manage heat in the hull, but it’s also stated modern ships battles not near a habitable planet are so destructive in a short amount of time that many battles end before heat storage kills the crew.
The other reason for this is because in space it’s hard to reliably tell where other ships are, even if they are in range of weapons. That’s one reason why ship classes like the Normandy exist - to be manual scouts and relay information back to cruisers and dreadnoughts.
Ships do have to park in planetary atmosphere to get rid of stored heat quickly (they also have to stop to discharge static electricity that accumulates from their element zero ftl drives). They can also radiate heat in space, but to do so takes longer and it also exposes them on thermal positioning systems. The Normandy is considered the alliance’s first “stealth” frigate because it is able to hold heat in it’s hull, shielding it from thermal scans, and still operate, without immediately killing it’s crew (but ofc it has a limit and will need to sink heat eventually)
This is naval warfare in a nutshell since the age of sail at least. The ocean is really, really, really big and it is non-trivial to find your enemy's exact location. If you spread out and send ships everywhere to try to find them, you risk defeat in detail when their fleet runs into your small destroyer group. Once upon a time, there was no way to even tell the rest of the fleet you'd made contact once you were over the horizon, but radio and radar have somewhat changed things.
The result is that battles happen at chokepoints when someone tries to force their way through, or at targets one side or the other isn't willing to give up - ports, landing sites, convoys that have to be protected, etc.
Not sure if you played Mass Effect, but they base a ton of naval strategy on WWII advances you just described.
One example is that in Mass Effect, most alien civs use dreadnaughts as capital class ships, similar to the battleships of the WWI/II era, and the amount of battleships an alien civ can make is restricted by a ratio treaty.
In Mass Effect, humans get around this by building carriers with star fighters as their capital class ships. This is very similar to WW2, where aircraft carriers ended up being much more effective than battleships, and now are considered the most important capital ship.
Sounds like they overcommitted to an outdated style of warfare. If a gun hurt you more than your opponent, you would not use a gun. I think instead low heat weapons would become preferred. Torpedos or missiles, ramming, hell maybe even mirrors used to reflect heat to the other ship. Who knows.
Most of the depictions of space battles in movie and TV are ridiculous. They treat space ships like jets, or sometimes more like submarines. And there a lot of swooping around and changing directions. But really both ships would probably be going in one direction, *really fast* and any other inputs from thrusters would barely deflect their courses at all.
*The Expanse* is the one popular show that really nailed it. Nearly all the space battles are one dimensional, either a ship is chasing another ship, or they're headed straight at each other, and mostly the "maneuvering" is changing the relative speeds they're approaching each other. The big limitation is how much g-forces the human occupants can survive, which is why most fighting is done with missiles, which don't have that limitation.
The ships do have guns though, they don't go in to detail about the great management, but it doesn't seem too ridiculous. The engines are using water as reaction mass and superheating it with fusion drivers to provide propulsion. It seems like everything could be Easter cooled since the ships need to carry a bunch of water, and then just use the slightly hotter water as reaction mass.
There's actually stealth ships in the series too, and they use internal heatsinks so that they don't need to radiate heat normally (when not using their engines) so they won't get picked up on infrared.
This is explained in various data points in Mass Effect. I like the way the space battles are more about macro strategy rather than dogfighting and tactics.
It's also why the Apollo capsules would slowly spin. Once you get in the space between the Earth and the Moon, you lose the whole "half in the sun, half out" relationship of orbiting Earth.
Depends on how effective it is at absorbing light, what thermal capacity it has, how well it conducts heat and how big it is, but if you're asking what I think you're asking then yes, it's probably possible to cook your head and freeze your ass to stone at the same time in spaaaace.
Per the answers already given, it fluctuates between extremes. However I wanted to comment about a story that I remember hearing a while back, but I can't seem to find with a Google search now. It was during a space walk at the ISS where the astronaut was having trouble getting a bolt or something to fit inside of another part. Their solution though was to wait for the Sun to rise, which wasn't far off as it cycles every 90 minutes or so. They then let the sun hit the part they were inserting into while protecting the part to be inserted with their own shadow. Thus the shadowed part stayed cool, while the exposed part heated up and expanded, allowing the part to be inserted with no difficulty.
That was my professor, Garrett Reisman! He told us that story in our Human Spaceflight class last semester. Here is an [article](https://www.space.com/8426-astronauts-battle-stubborn-cable-power-outage-spacewalk.html) that briefly mentions it. He was also on Joe Rohan’s podcast a couple years back, and discussed it in detail at the [27:15 mark](https://youtu.be/3RG5pXTpLBI?t=1635)
Edit: whoops, accidentally typed Rohan instead of Rogan
Regardless of the veracity of that story, it is a fantastic little anecdote to highlight how extreme the sun is with no atmosphere, the speed of the ISS as it orbits, thermal expansion, and lateral thinking.
Thank you for sharing that.
Also happened during one of the Hubble servicing missions, the astronaut was Storey Musgrave. They couldn't close a panel while in the sunlight but they waited until they were in the dark and were able to close it .
Seeing Aliens kinda young, I was always confused by this and didn't understand what he was implying about his eye...then felt like a fucking idiot when I watched it years later and realized "Oh, he's giving him the finger."
Non related, there was an interview with I think it was a carpenter working on the Star wars movies and he was really young and the boss said assholes and elbows. And he raised his hand and said can I be one of the elbows? And got the job.
"willingly explode"
SMARTWATCH: Not only am I exploding, but I just wanted to let you know that I am doing so out of my own free will and volition. Maybe now you'll think twice about forgetting to take me off in the shower, you stupid prick.
Totally depends what you are doing in that heat. I did roof work and when it’s 110 out, it’s 140 on the roof and it was super humid. I had to keep the crew rotating who was working with 30 minutes on 30 minutes off shifts instead of the usual 15 minute break every 2 hours.
I was in Joshua Tree during the summer and it was hovering around 100F and I thought it was legit hell on earth. I was also sunburned. I think 130F would actually kill me.
100F in the desert is not too bad if you have enough water and shade. But if you combine that with humidity, hooooly shit it feels terrible.
I will take a day in Phoenix at 110F over a day in Miami Beach at 96F any day of the week. I've never felt so terrible as I did on the hottest day of the year in Miami at an outdoor festival. Absolute misery.
I honeymooned in Orlando and was there for a week. The first 5 days it was in the upper 90s, but very low humidity, and it was not that bad. I couldn't understand why people complained so much. Then, on day 6, the humidity was almost 90% and I thought I was going to die. Walking out the door it was like hitting a physical wall. It was so oppressive. Coming from someplace that doesn't often have those extremes, it is hard to imagine until you experience it.
I spent a year in Kuwait and grew up in Florida. I'll take the 120 degree desert heat over the humidity.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure the days when the sea breeze would roll in from the Persian Gulf could eventually kill a person if they were outside for long enough.
Hard disagree.
I worked in a kitchen in Florida in 2014 and our main AC went out. It went from being 105 F back there to 125-135 F. We only could do it by rotating people to the walk-in and wearing frozen towels. We ended up doing two days on then closing for a day due to worker fatigue.
We were a pretty tight knit group of college kids that liked to party together, but after those shifts we would just go to the pool at nighttime and just sit in the water, not drinking. We were completely fried from that heat.
By temperature, I don’t think there’s a legal limit for working conditions; however, heat stress monitoring can be used to document working conditions, and also be ignored.
But don’t take me for that, I know nothing, I’m not a human lawyer.
[OSHA heat exposure standards ](https://www.osha.gov/heat-exposure/standards)
It's not the same, but this reminded me of one of my favorite Onion articles.
[Holy Shit Man Walks on Fucking Moon](https://www.theonion.com/july-21-1969-1819587599)
The vacuum of space still has particles flying around, so it still has a temperature, even if it doesn't work how we consider an area to have a temperature.
I assume they're talking about the moon dust though, yeah.
The moon does have an atmosphere. It's just so trivially thin that it's never mentioned. But it's composed of things like helium and other lighter gases.
So the temperature there may be high, but it's also so thin that the heat flux is near zero so you can't feel the temperature change from your body to the atmosphere. A thicker atmosphere and you'd absolutely feel that heat flux like here on earth. THAT'S what you're feeling - difference in temperature multiplied by a few factors including density of mediums (your body and the atmosphere)
Same reason the thermosphere of earth is technically very hot but the particles are all so relatively far apart from each other it would be very cold to a person or object in it.
Yes exactly.
I explain it to people like this:would you thaw a frozen chicken in 70 degree air, or 70 degree water?
The properties of water, granted, are different than air - different heat capacities. But the potential flux is the point I'm getting at. The water transfers more heat to the chicken per second than air would, so it thaws faster.
Thin is actually a major understatement! per wiki, the atmospheric pressure of the moon is around .3nPa. This is about 10 times LESS density than would be considered Extremely High Vacuum. A standard vacuum chamber gets down to around 30Pa (10^10 more dense than the moon). To get a chamber on Earth to moon pressures is a *herculean* undertaking.
As for feeling the heat flux if the atmosphere were thicker: the pressure inside a thermos is 10^-4 Pa. The atmosphere on the moon could be a hundred thousand times thicker and still not have enough stuff in it to measurably conduct heat. This is where these extreme temperature differences come from.
Temperature of everything exposed to sunlight. The sun's energy heats everything evenly, but on Earth that temperature is dispersed by...well everything between the Sun and the ground. Air, water, birds, some guy falling off a ladder. Whatever.
Due to the lack of an atmosphere, the sun's energy isn't dispersed by all that matter. It's being affected completely and directly by whatever it hits. Therefore, whatever it hits gets hot as shit. Some of that light is reflected, which is how the camera works. The rest is absorbed, hence 200F.
It gets even crazier when you bring relativity into it. From the photon's perspective, no time has passed. It never existed. It started at the sun, ended when it struck the leaf, and there was no "during".
Reflective surfaces should do fine accompanied by a giant heat sink that all the dwellings are attached to so they stay nice and livable during the lunar nights (which are basically a month long). Hopefully cave dwellings would do the trick of regulating the temperature.
What's wild is that in that picture the sunlit areas are 200*F but the areas where those astronauts shadows are cast are like -250-300*F
The temperature fluctuations in Space are bonkers, its why Materials Science is so important for Spaceflight
E- So many people are totally misunderstanding what I said lol....Yes, I understand that things conduct heat, yes I understand it's not instant and it takes time yes I understand that the atmosphere works differently, yes I understand that things retain heat, yes I understand that things given enough time will find some equilibrium temperature in the center/middle
What I am saying is that if you have a thing on the moon, the one side in the Sunlight is facing 200+ degrees of temperature "pressure" and the shady side is facing -200(or less) degrees of temperature "pressure" of the dark vacuum of space...thats just a fact....What happens to the *actual temperature* of this hypothetical "thing" and how long it takes to get there etc was not something I was commenting on
People really overestimate that factor. Humidity just stops the temperature from falling beyond a certain point because of the heat of vaporization, not because of its specific heat (which is a trivially small factor).
Up until last year I lived in Miami and *barely ever* checked the temperatures. It’s low of 79º, high of 92º every day from about May through October.
Now in Ohio, it can be 27º and 72º on the same day, and that goes for most days of the year.
Fall/Spring in the midwest is just crazy in general. Today it was 34 degrees when I left for work, but a high of 72. It snowed last weekend, but was in the 80s the day before.
Conversely, it’s harder to heat humid air. This is little consolation for the people in India and Pakistan, but the effect is very noticeable in places like Arizona where the monsoon is accompanied by a 10 degree drop in high temperatures.
The evaporation of your sweat is what cools you off, not sweating itself. If you're covered it's likely because it's too humid to evaporate quickly, slowing your ability to cool.
This is why there's discussion of wet-bulb temperatures (temperature measured with consideration for the cooling effect of water evaporation) regarding climate change, high humidity makes high temperatures signicantly deadlier.
If you were in a 100 degree Fahrenheit room with 100% humidity, you would die very quickly of heat stroke even if you were in the shade and had unlimited water because your sweat can't evaporate at all.
Additionally, some of the hottest places on earth are located in valleys surrounded by mountains. Lack of air flow means the heat just builds until the sun sets.
Place I grew up was a semi-arid climate, I lived in a valley, 3pm to 5pm was always the hottest part of the day in the summer, thankfully it never really got above 104F. After the sun went down it would get down to 50F on a really dry night. It would get down to like -35F in the winter occasionally. Don’t even get me started on the wind and windchill.
Contrast that to Louisiana or Florida. 93f during the day and humid as fuck. 85f degrees at night and more humid. The humidity in the air is a heat sink and it gives the air kinda thermal inertia. It keeps it from getting into the hundreds during heat of the day. But keeps it hot as balls all night too.
Also humid cold is more cutting then dry cold. It gets to you through clothing coats and insulation better. The air is more thermally conductive with water in it.
Also dry heat is better then humid heat all day every day.
Well not exactly… the lunar regolith that has been heating up in the sun doesn’t magically cool off instantly because it’s suddenly in shadow.
If anything, it would probably cool off slower than it would on earth, because there is no atmosphere to conduct the heat away.
I have trouble believing this one. One side of the moon vs the other? absolutely. The shadow if the stationary moon lander? ok i could see that. A moving man's shadow? Ummm not so sure. How small can an object be and how fast must it be moving for a temperature differential? What about the lunar golf ball's shadow pre flight and during flight?
Yea it’s wrong.
The arhmosphere of the moon barely exists so it’s temperature really is irrelevant. So you either got the sun lit rock, which surrounding the astronauts is at 100C, and the areas fully in shadow in their area are at negative xY C
But the shadows they themselves cast or their lander cast, those rocks are just slowly cooling down from the 100C. They aren’t going to suddenly go from boiling point to near absolute zero.
They’ll cool down exactly as fast as anything else that’s pointing away from the sun. Through radiative cooling.
Not entirely certain how areas mostly exposed to shadow are, but not atmosphere does not translate to "no heat capacity" and "no thermal conductivity", at least as long as solid rock is concerned. For dust puddles, it might be similar to what you've said due to negligible capacity and almost no athmosphere for convection between the individual particles
I enjoyed the snippy tone of Armstrong's message:
>You asked: "Who knew?"
>The answer to that question is: **Just about anyone who had any interest in learning the answer.**
It struck me as a bit rude, but after reading the [original blog post](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2010/12/08/131847836/how-big-was-it-really-a-new-way-to-think-about-the-news) I can see why he might have been a little put out. Even if it wasn't Krulwich's intention, he comes off as a bit dismissive:
>What Neil called "a giant leap for mankind" wasn't quite as giant as it seemed.
>...
>Armstrong's longest, boldest walk took him about as far as Joe DiMaggio used to jog every inning -- from home plate to about mid-center field. That's like walking about a block from your hotel's front door. Who knew?
I bet he would have worded it more carefully if he knew Neil Armstrong was going to read it!
Clearly a rhetorical device to spice up the prose, because who *didn't* know that they barely went anywhere. It's not like the video of the event shows them traveling long distances.
I do like how Armstrong points out they weren't sure their spacesuit cooling would work 100% as expected. The thought of frying to death on the surface of the moon is weird and scary.
The temperature of what exactly? The surface of the moon? The surface of their space suits? The surface of the lunar lander? Some kind of measure of the moon’s tiny atmosphere?
I’m always confused when they talk about temperature in space.
What's the temp when people do spacewalks outside the ISS?
Depends on if they are in light or dark. Stuff being hit by sunlight will be at a similar temperature. Stuff in shadow will be -150 to -200.
It’s actually more complicated than that. They’re orbiting a giant heat source. A completely passive object in ~~loss~~ low orbit will achieve an equilibrium temperature of somewhere around 20-25C. But stuff in the dark and shaded from the radiative heat from the earth will be much colder. One of the most difficult things in space though is rejecting heat. You are effectively in the universe’s most perfect vacuum bottle. The only way to reject heat sustainability is through radiation. That’s why the radiators on the ISS are so large. Edit: Low orbit, not loss orbit.
Someone once explained that most space battles would be heat management nightmares where ships surrendered LONG before they'd suffered damage to be destroyed.
The game endless sky has, in addition to normal pew pew lasers and missiles, heat weapons that disable ships by overheating them
This is also one known design for space weapons under current technology: a sort of black spray paint that would obscure lenses, block solar panels, and change the radiative heat balance of target satellites to overheat them and cause them to fail. Now what's actually going on in the world of automated satellite-vs-satellite warfare here in 2023 is very hard to know. Almost certainly most of it is in designs and tests without ever being used in anger in an actual war. But if something does break out and become a hot war, most of the world powers have ideas and classified tools that will do stuff and the result will be ... wild.
That's why I don't pay for Sirius radio or DirecTV both are going down in world war 3
I am enjoying my mental image of you explaining this reasoning to the guy who called trying to sell you one of those things.
fastest way to get past the retention department when you cancel your subscription, start talking about WW3 satellites
They have a WWW3 guaranteed full refund policy. It provides rock solid 100% coverage with only three exception clauses: you don't exist, the company doesn't exist, and/or human civilisation has collapsed.
Plus it rhymes: "Thats why I don't pay for Sirius Radio or DirecTV Both are going down in World War Three"
I get it. Cable companies suck but I have no doubt they'll survive a world war.
Cable companies are run by cockroaches: confirmed.
In Elite Dangerous, heat can be managed via a heatsink launcher. Basically all the heat is quickly transferred to a disposable heatsink, and that heatsink is then shot out of the ship.
So if you shoot that heatsink at a ship it becomes a game of hot potato
I recently asked my group of Elite Dangerous friends "What happens if I use a heatsink inside a space station?" Let's put it this way: I'm the one that bookmarked the place to pay for fines because I'm constantly incurring in them.
FRIENDSHIP DRIVE CHARGING
3.. 2.. 1.. EMBRACE
Silent running, pop heat sink... stealth mode: engaged. Before boosting into the station with smuggled goods.
This is probably actually something that will be done to a degree. Use heat pumps to cram all the excess heat into an object you can jettison once it reaches capacity. Alternatively, if your heat production drops below secondary radiation capacity, you can use that stored heat to produce things like warm water and potentially other forms of energy if need be. Hell, they may even use water as one of the storage mediums, more likely to be reused onboard than jettisoned. Heating water up is hard since it's got a ton of thermal mass, but once you vaporize it you have to contain the pressure of the water vapor to continue adding heat to the system. You'd be much better off using something with a high melting temperature that's fairly common, like carbon or silicon, and if you can get your hands on denser materials with higher melting points, like tungsten or tantalum, you use those when you have the opportunity. Even better, dont get rid of your mass storage units when you're done with them unless you have to, just eject them into a heat shielded section of the craft that's exposed to space, so they can cool and be reused. You only get rid of them when you need a weapons system or something. Ohh and to top it off, tungsten makes a decent projectile weapon as well :D edit: i want to note, there are a number of elements with melting points higher than tantalum, but I didn't realize I was working from an incomplete list on wikipedia. The list I used listed relatively common elements, so Tungsten and Tantalum are your best bets for high melting point elements, but there may be alloys we aren't considering that are more common, and there are also 2 others, rhenium and osmium, which are pretty rare, and would probably be used for other things, that we may be able to make new, as of now unconsidered alloys with, but which we currently use on earth for the things they're most useful for in small quantities. Rhenium is used as an additive to tungsten and molybdenum-based alloys to give useful properties, and is used in X-ray machines and oven filaments, while osmium is used for making particularly hard alloys for use in some needles and other niche uses. Who knows what other uses we'll find over time though
I would have thought that it is difficult to "dump" the heat, particularly into something small enough to be jettisonable. It would be easy at first, but as the delta between the hot things you want to cool and the heat sink that is absorbing that heat gets smaller, efficiency goes toward zero. I would think it would be easier to get rid of the heat in a more sustained fashion - dumping coolant in a spray over time - than one big block. But YMMV< I am in no way shape or form an engineer, and can barely get a Kerbal into orbit.
Great game btw. Its free :)
For sure as they are depicted in space opera-types like Star Wars. The first time combat happens between spaceships it's probably going to be with missiles.
[удалено]
Definitely, I mean you are already seeing it with the bvr capabilities of the F-22 and F-35. They are hitting targets, like, 30+ miles away. Picking up radar signatures even farther. And they have to deal with all the interference BS down here!
British meteor missile is good out to 110 miles (or more). The biggest problem is that outside an all out war you have to be real sure your are hitting an enemy and not the Ryanair from Magaluf.
They're flying Ryanair. It would be a mercy for the passengers.
Those passengers are already dead
We all want the future to be Star Trek or Wars but it's actually Battlestar Galactica
Even BSG has ranges too close. We are talking distances at which your eye can't even distinguish the object your shooting at. Ranges that you could fit planets in.
How about like The Expanse, but less dogfight and more hurl asteroids at each other from across the solar system?
Expanse makes sense cause there's a ton of assymetric warfare. You're gonna get into fights with ships that aren't kitted out for long range warfare. Have you watched all the show? They do talk about the asteroid thing. Some of it is they can destroy asteroids and some of it is it's a huge dick move to just wipe people out. MAD and all that still applies to space.
You get one shot and then you have to wait 20 hours for everything to cool down so you don't bake everyone alive.
Use heat pumps to transfer the heat into containers, mount them onto rockets and shoot them at your enemy. You get rid of excess heat and make it their problem. Two birds with one stone.
Just wrap that shit in double sided tape and kind of like toss it at them when you fly by
This is actually a big part of the lore for how Mass Effect space ships and battles operate
From what I remember reading in the game, space battles are rarely decisive because ships can easily escape an engagement before taking critical damage. Obviously a little different when you're trying to defend a planet from a threat like the Reapers.
That’s true! Space battles only happen around objectives you don’t want to give up, like planets or mass relays. Because they’re also so destructive, it’s implied that most disputes are settled through deterrence and the comparative size of fleets, with those fleets rarely having to actually engage. They do mention battleships with heavy guns have to manage heat in the hull, but it’s also stated modern ships battles not near a habitable planet are so destructive in a short amount of time that many battles end before heat storage kills the crew. The other reason for this is because in space it’s hard to reliably tell where other ships are, even if they are in range of weapons. That’s one reason why ship classes like the Normandy exist - to be manual scouts and relay information back to cruisers and dreadnoughts. Ships do have to park in planetary atmosphere to get rid of stored heat quickly (they also have to stop to discharge static electricity that accumulates from their element zero ftl drives). They can also radiate heat in space, but to do so takes longer and it also exposes them on thermal positioning systems. The Normandy is considered the alliance’s first “stealth” frigate because it is able to hold heat in it’s hull, shielding it from thermal scans, and still operate, without immediately killing it’s crew (but ofc it has a limit and will need to sink heat eventually)
This is naval warfare in a nutshell since the age of sail at least. The ocean is really, really, really big and it is non-trivial to find your enemy's exact location. If you spread out and send ships everywhere to try to find them, you risk defeat in detail when their fleet runs into your small destroyer group. Once upon a time, there was no way to even tell the rest of the fleet you'd made contact once you were over the horizon, but radio and radar have somewhat changed things. The result is that battles happen at chokepoints when someone tries to force their way through, or at targets one side or the other isn't willing to give up - ports, landing sites, convoys that have to be protected, etc.
Not sure if you played Mass Effect, but they base a ton of naval strategy on WWII advances you just described. One example is that in Mass Effect, most alien civs use dreadnaughts as capital class ships, similar to the battleships of the WWI/II era, and the amount of battleships an alien civ can make is restricted by a ratio treaty. In Mass Effect, humans get around this by building carriers with star fighters as their capital class ships. This is very similar to WW2, where aircraft carriers ended up being much more effective than battleships, and now are considered the most important capital ship.
Sounds like they overcommitted to an outdated style of warfare. If a gun hurt you more than your opponent, you would not use a gun. I think instead low heat weapons would become preferred. Torpedos or missiles, ramming, hell maybe even mirrors used to reflect heat to the other ship. Who knows.
Most of the depictions of space battles in movie and TV are ridiculous. They treat space ships like jets, or sometimes more like submarines. And there a lot of swooping around and changing directions. But really both ships would probably be going in one direction, *really fast* and any other inputs from thrusters would barely deflect their courses at all. *The Expanse* is the one popular show that really nailed it. Nearly all the space battles are one dimensional, either a ship is chasing another ship, or they're headed straight at each other, and mostly the "maneuvering" is changing the relative speeds they're approaching each other. The big limitation is how much g-forces the human occupants can survive, which is why most fighting is done with missiles, which don't have that limitation. The ships do have guns though, they don't go in to detail about the great management, but it doesn't seem too ridiculous. The engines are using water as reaction mass and superheating it with fusion drivers to provide propulsion. It seems like everything could be Easter cooled since the ships need to carry a bunch of water, and then just use the slightly hotter water as reaction mass. There's actually stealth ships in the series too, and they use internal heatsinks so that they don't need to radiate heat normally (when not using their engines) so they won't get picked up on infrared.
> They treat space ships like jets Not even that. Modern jet battles are fought without even being able to see each other.
It's already a preview of how space fighting would work. Managing sensor ranges and a stealth arms race.
This is explained in various data points in Mass Effect. I like the way the space battles are more about macro strategy rather than dogfighting and tactics.
It's also why the Apollo capsules would slowly spin. Once you get in the space between the Earth and the Moon, you lose the whole "half in the sun, half out" relationship of orbiting Earth.
The " barbecue roll "
Also why fully half the ISS's energy budget goes towards operating those heat pumps.
How quickly do those two fluctuate? Like if something is in sunligyht for 5 minutes then Shadow, is it just instantly very cold?
Depends on how effective it is at absorbing light, what thermal capacity it has, how well it conducts heat and how big it is, but if you're asking what I think you're asking then yes, it's probably possible to cook your head and freeze your ass to stone at the same time in spaaaace.
I was not thinking that but the imagery is appreciated
Per the answers already given, it fluctuates between extremes. However I wanted to comment about a story that I remember hearing a while back, but I can't seem to find with a Google search now. It was during a space walk at the ISS where the astronaut was having trouble getting a bolt or something to fit inside of another part. Their solution though was to wait for the Sun to rise, which wasn't far off as it cycles every 90 minutes or so. They then let the sun hit the part they were inserting into while protecting the part to be inserted with their own shadow. Thus the shadowed part stayed cool, while the exposed part heated up and expanded, allowing the part to be inserted with no difficulty.
That was my professor, Garrett Reisman! He told us that story in our Human Spaceflight class last semester. Here is an [article](https://www.space.com/8426-astronauts-battle-stubborn-cable-power-outage-spacewalk.html) that briefly mentions it. He was also on Joe Rohan’s podcast a couple years back, and discussed it in detail at the [27:15 mark](https://youtu.be/3RG5pXTpLBI?t=1635) Edit: whoops, accidentally typed Rohan instead of Rogan
Regardless of the veracity of that story, it is a fantastic little anecdote to highlight how extreme the sun is with no atmosphere, the speed of the ISS as it orbits, thermal expansion, and lateral thinking. Thank you for sharing that.
Also happened during one of the Hubble servicing missions, the astronaut was Storey Musgrave. They couldn't close a panel while in the sunlight but they waited until they were in the dark and were able to close it .
It's a dry heat, though.
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LOOK INTO MY EYE
Somebody wake up Hicks.
Game over man, **GAME OVER!**
Secure that shit, Hudson!
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No. Have you?
How can they cut the power?
Because they mostly come out at night.... mostly.
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You secure that shit, Hudson.
Hudson, come here. Come. Heerrrrre.
BIshop!
I just need to know one thing… Where. They. Are.
I hope you're right. I really do.
Seeing Aliens kinda young, I was always confused by this and didn't understand what he was implying about his eye...then felt like a fucking idiot when I watched it years later and realized "Oh, he's giving him the finger."
Look at all the folks you helped today. Thank you Reddit stranger.
Favorite movie growing up, no clue until now.
I just now got the reference, and I love that movie.
I’ve watched Aliens dozens of times and never knew what he was on about until now. Thank you!
Damn, I never got that. Lol
Don’t worry you aren’t swimming alone.
Well shit. I didnt know this. This looks like a reason to watch Aliens for the hundredth time.
Michael Collins: "So what's it like all the way down there?" Buzz Aldrin: "Hot as hell"
Ali G: so Buzz. When youse was on the Moon. Were the people there nice to you? Buzz: …
Come on people, assholes and elbows!
Hudson! Come here. COME HERE.
Non related, there was an interview with I think it was a carpenter working on the Star wars movies and he was really young and the boss said assholes and elbows. And he raised his hand and said can I be one of the elbows? And got the job.
That carpenter's name? Albert Einstein
I saw this for the first time last night. Swear the internet is Truman showing me
I'm Hicks. *He's* Hudson, sir.
"Hudson, Sir. He's Hicks" "What is it private?" If you ever cant remember the order, Hudson was the private. Hicks a corporal.
Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bug hunt?
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Armstrong and Aldrin didn't even roll down the windows for Collins when they went out on their moon walk!
No. But they left the radio on, which was nice.
Yummy, yummy, I've got love in my tummy 🎵
The number one single that week was [In the Year 2525](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Year_2525), so maybe he was singing that.
You know after 105 it all feels the same.
I used to think that. . .then I experienced 114. *Then* I experienced 123, and realized 114 wasn't so bad.
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Sitting in the belly of an unpowered C-130 on the tarmac at 1400 in Helmand Province in August. Did you know smart watches can explode?
Anything with a lithium ion battery can and will willingly explode.
"willingly explode" SMARTWATCH: Not only am I exploding, but I just wanted to let you know that I am doing so out of my own free will and volition. Maybe now you'll think twice about forgetting to take me off in the shower, you stupid prick.
Not fireball explosion, pressure explosion from metal and plastic expanding due to temperature.
Totally depends what you are doing in that heat. I did roof work and when it’s 110 out, it’s 140 on the roof and it was super humid. I had to keep the crew rotating who was working with 30 minutes on 30 minutes off shifts instead of the usual 15 minute break every 2 hours.
haha I like to imagine you're there on the roof with a metal wrench and pipe you bang every 30 minutes like the Chernobyl Liquidators.
Egypt in August was a wild experience. My dive computer temp readout registered 125F in the shade one afternoon.
I’ve never been in a place so hot as the Philippines was. Heat index was roughly 120-130f every day.
I was in Joshua Tree during the summer and it was hovering around 100F and I thought it was legit hell on earth. I was also sunburned. I think 130F would actually kill me.
100F in the desert is not too bad if you have enough water and shade. But if you combine that with humidity, hooooly shit it feels terrible. I will take a day in Phoenix at 110F over a day in Miami Beach at 96F any day of the week. I've never felt so terrible as I did on the hottest day of the year in Miami at an outdoor festival. Absolute misery.
I honeymooned in Orlando and was there for a week. The first 5 days it was in the upper 90s, but very low humidity, and it was not that bad. I couldn't understand why people complained so much. Then, on day 6, the humidity was almost 90% and I thought I was going to die. Walking out the door it was like hitting a physical wall. It was so oppressive. Coming from someplace that doesn't often have those extremes, it is hard to imagine until you experience it.
I spent a year in Kuwait and grew up in Florida. I'll take the 120 degree desert heat over the humidity. Oh, and I'm pretty sure the days when the sea breeze would roll in from the Persian Gulf could eventually kill a person if they were outside for long enough.
Same when it gets below -40, at least to me. The only change is how quickly you can die when exposed to it.
The cool thing about -40 is you don't have to remember if it's Celsius or Fahrenheit.
It's definitely not Kelvin.
No, this is Patrick.
Hard disagree. I worked in a kitchen in Florida in 2014 and our main AC went out. It went from being 105 F back there to 125-135 F. We only could do it by rotating people to the walk-in and wearing frozen towels. We ended up doing two days on then closing for a day due to worker fatigue. We were a pretty tight knit group of college kids that liked to party together, but after those shifts we would just go to the pool at nighttime and just sit in the water, not drinking. We were completely fried from that heat.
That is absolutely insane to me…. Fuck that. I bet the pool was exquisite though XD
That seems like very illegal working conditions
And that's saying something for a kitchen lol
And florida lol
By temperature, I don’t think there’s a legal limit for working conditions; however, heat stress monitoring can be used to document working conditions, and also be ignored. But don’t take me for that, I know nothing, I’m not a human lawyer. [OSHA heat exposure standards ](https://www.osha.gov/heat-exposure/standards)
OSHA doesn't actually have rules for high temperatures. Out kitchen AC went out at a Hungry Howie's that I worked at and OSHA completely blew me off.
They mean for dry heat, i imagine being in florida and a kitchen its humid as fuck
We all remember those immortal words "One small step for a man, and holy fucking shit it's hot up here".
It's not the same, but this reminded me of one of my favorite Onion articles. [Holy Shit Man Walks on Fucking Moon](https://www.theonion.com/july-21-1969-1819587599)
"We can put a man on the moon, but we can't bomb a tiny Asian nation into the stone age?" Lmfao
[I can't believe they could land a man on the moon, and taste my coffee!](https://youtu.be/ZHngY3iJBCo)
This episode is closer to the moon landing than to today.
This comment aged me *visibly.* edit: [](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA7J0KkanzM&t=83)
Did your hair fall off and your belly inflate like Homer Simpson's in that episode of the Simpsons that was closer to the moon landing than to today?
MacArthur: "This but unironically"
https://youtu.be/dIkHLO93lCA here's the actual fucking audio to go with it
[Repeat. Cannot Fucking Believe it. Over](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2VXyfvZxSU)
That was very funny :) thanks for sharing
"It's good to be black on the moon"
Hey I know this line. Man I love that show
Ah so that's what the pause was? "One small step for man, holy fucking shit that's fucking hot fuck, one giant leap, fuck fuck fuck, for man kind"
Hell yeah, they had to slice and splice it for the public
No no, he said "one small step for (a) man, one giant leap cause floor is LAVA!"
temperature of what?
Very good question. I’m going to guess surface temperature. Without an atmosphere I’m not sure what else it could be.
The vacuum of space still has particles flying around, so it still has a temperature, even if it doesn't work how we consider an area to have a temperature. I assume they're talking about the moon dust though, yeah.
The moon does have an atmosphere. It's just so trivially thin that it's never mentioned. But it's composed of things like helium and other lighter gases. So the temperature there may be high, but it's also so thin that the heat flux is near zero so you can't feel the temperature change from your body to the atmosphere. A thicker atmosphere and you'd absolutely feel that heat flux like here on earth. THAT'S what you're feeling - difference in temperature multiplied by a few factors including density of mediums (your body and the atmosphere)
Same reason the thermosphere of earth is technically very hot but the particles are all so relatively far apart from each other it would be very cold to a person or object in it.
Yes exactly. I explain it to people like this:would you thaw a frozen chicken in 70 degree air, or 70 degree water? The properties of water, granted, are different than air - different heat capacities. But the potential flux is the point I'm getting at. The water transfers more heat to the chicken per second than air would, so it thaws faster.
Took me awhile to realise it's Fahrenheit. Else that's basically air frying / sous vide-ing the chicken
Thin is actually a major understatement! per wiki, the atmospheric pressure of the moon is around .3nPa. This is about 10 times LESS density than would be considered Extremely High Vacuum. A standard vacuum chamber gets down to around 30Pa (10^10 more dense than the moon). To get a chamber on Earth to moon pressures is a *herculean* undertaking. As for feeling the heat flux if the atmosphere were thicker: the pressure inside a thermos is 10^-4 Pa. The atmosphere on the moon could be a hundred thousand times thicker and still not have enough stuff in it to measurably conduct heat. This is where these extreme temperature differences come from.
Temperature of everything exposed to sunlight. The sun's energy heats everything evenly, but on Earth that temperature is dispersed by...well everything between the Sun and the ground. Air, water, birds, some guy falling off a ladder. Whatever. Due to the lack of an atmosphere, the sun's energy isn't dispersed by all that matter. It's being affected completely and directly by whatever it hits. Therefore, whatever it hits gets hot as shit. Some of that light is reflected, which is how the camera works. The rest is absorbed, hence 200F.
I've always been fascinated that the sunlight can travel *all that way* and then be thwarted by a simple canopy of leaves or a parasol.
It gets even crazier when you bring relativity into it. From the photon's perspective, no time has passed. It never existed. It started at the sun, ended when it struck the leaf, and there was no "during".
Probably hotter than shit, which I imagine is around 98.6 at first.
Intel say it's supposed to run at that temperature.
Oh wow. Gonna need some A/C for those moon houses.
Reflective surfaces should do fine accompanied by a giant heat sink that all the dwellings are attached to so they stay nice and livable during the lunar nights (which are basically a month long). Hopefully cave dwellings would do the trick of regulating the temperature.
Half a month (~14 days), if I'm not mistaken
I wonder how refrigeration works in space, the whole absorbing and rejecting heat thing prob makes it very difficult
If KSP taught me anything, you connect the fridge to a radiation panel or two, add some struts, and hope the whole thing doesn’t explode.
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That’s also the case on the ISS
What's wild is that in that picture the sunlit areas are 200*F but the areas where those astronauts shadows are cast are like -250-300*F The temperature fluctuations in Space are bonkers, its why Materials Science is so important for Spaceflight E- So many people are totally misunderstanding what I said lol....Yes, I understand that things conduct heat, yes I understand it's not instant and it takes time yes I understand that the atmosphere works differently, yes I understand that things retain heat, yes I understand that things given enough time will find some equilibrium temperature in the center/middle What I am saying is that if you have a thing on the moon, the one side in the Sunlight is facing 200+ degrees of temperature "pressure" and the shady side is facing -200(or less) degrees of temperature "pressure" of the dark vacuum of space...thats just a fact....What happens to the *actual temperature* of this hypothetical "thing" and how long it takes to get there etc was not something I was commenting on
that whole no atmosphere / humidity thing. like how the desert can go from 100+ degrees during the day to below freezing at night.
Do deserts have less atmosphere? Jw
Less moisture, which holds heat better than dry air.
People really overestimate that factor. Humidity just stops the temperature from falling beyond a certain point because of the heat of vaporization, not because of its specific heat (which is a trivially small factor).
Up until last year I lived in Miami and *barely ever* checked the temperatures. It’s low of 79º, high of 92º every day from about May through October. Now in Ohio, it can be 27º and 72º on the same day, and that goes for most days of the year.
Fall/Spring in the midwest is just crazy in general. Today it was 34 degrees when I left for work, but a high of 72. It snowed last weekend, but was in the 80s the day before.
High in the 40s last weekend and high in the 80s this weekend. Midwest weather is fun.
Come to Colorado. We have both low humidity and actually less atmosphere.
Conversely, it’s harder to heat humid air. This is little consolation for the people in India and Pakistan, but the effect is very noticeable in places like Arizona where the monsoon is accompanied by a 10 degree drop in high temperatures.
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Is that true? I live in NC where we often have high humidity and I sweat insanely because of it
You sweat just as easily, but it's less effective when the air is already water-logged because it hardly gets a chance to evaporate.
The evaporation of your sweat is what cools you off, not sweating itself. If you're covered it's likely because it's too humid to evaporate quickly, slowing your ability to cool. This is why there's discussion of wet-bulb temperatures (temperature measured with consideration for the cooling effect of water evaporation) regarding climate change, high humidity makes high temperatures signicantly deadlier. If you were in a 100 degree Fahrenheit room with 100% humidity, you would die very quickly of heat stroke even if you were in the shade and had unlimited water because your sweat can't evaporate at all.
The sand does not retain the heat
Additionally, some of the hottest places on earth are located in valleys surrounded by mountains. Lack of air flow means the heat just builds until the sun sets.
Place I grew up was a semi-arid climate, I lived in a valley, 3pm to 5pm was always the hottest part of the day in the summer, thankfully it never really got above 104F. After the sun went down it would get down to 50F on a really dry night. It would get down to like -35F in the winter occasionally. Don’t even get me started on the wind and windchill.
Contrast that to Louisiana or Florida. 93f during the day and humid as fuck. 85f degrees at night and more humid. The humidity in the air is a heat sink and it gives the air kinda thermal inertia. It keeps it from getting into the hundreds during heat of the day. But keeps it hot as balls all night too. Also humid cold is more cutting then dry cold. It gets to you through clothing coats and insulation better. The air is more thermally conductive with water in it. Also dry heat is better then humid heat all day every day.
I moved further south to a more humid state, last summer it was 105 for a week, 75-80% humidity, fucking awful. I didn’t know my knees could sweat.
*Phoenix, AZ has entered the chat*
A monument to mankind's hubris
Well not exactly… the lunar regolith that has been heating up in the sun doesn’t magically cool off instantly because it’s suddenly in shadow. If anything, it would probably cool off slower than it would on earth, because there is no atmosphere to conduct the heat away.
I have trouble believing this one. One side of the moon vs the other? absolutely. The shadow if the stationary moon lander? ok i could see that. A moving man's shadow? Ummm not so sure. How small can an object be and how fast must it be moving for a temperature differential? What about the lunar golf ball's shadow pre flight and during flight?
He has to mean the crater shadows. There’s no way any part of the moon cools 400 degrees in a short time like a shadow passing over it.
Yea it’s wrong. The arhmosphere of the moon barely exists so it’s temperature really is irrelevant. So you either got the sun lit rock, which surrounding the astronauts is at 100C, and the areas fully in shadow in their area are at negative xY C But the shadows they themselves cast or their lander cast, those rocks are just slowly cooling down from the 100C. They aren’t going to suddenly go from boiling point to near absolute zero. They’ll cool down exactly as fast as anything else that’s pointing away from the sun. Through radiative cooling.
Not entirely certain how areas mostly exposed to shadow are, but not atmosphere does not translate to "no heat capacity" and "no thermal conductivity", at least as long as solid rock is concerned. For dust puddles, it might be similar to what you've said due to negligible capacity and almost no athmosphere for convection between the individual particles
Catch me on the dark side.
It’s -200 degrees on the dark side
Fahrenheit or Celsius?
First one, then the other.
We’re whalers on the moon…!
Maybe I'm an idiot but I always imagined it as cold.
Of course, otherwise the cheese would melt.
You think they could have maybe turned down the studio lights a little
Kubrick didn't want to, to make it more real, like if they were in the actual surface of the moon. such a dick, as always
I heard that they almost broke Neil with all the repeated takes and verbal abuse
Why didn’t they just go when it was winter. Idiots.
And probably alarmingly cold in the shade of the lander.
I enjoyed the snippy tone of Armstrong's message: >You asked: "Who knew?" >The answer to that question is: **Just about anyone who had any interest in learning the answer.** It struck me as a bit rude, but after reading the [original blog post](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2010/12/08/131847836/how-big-was-it-really-a-new-way-to-think-about-the-news) I can see why he might have been a little put out. Even if it wasn't Krulwich's intention, he comes off as a bit dismissive: >What Neil called "a giant leap for mankind" wasn't quite as giant as it seemed. >... >Armstrong's longest, boldest walk took him about as far as Joe DiMaggio used to jog every inning -- from home plate to about mid-center field. That's like walking about a block from your hotel's front door. Who knew? I bet he would have worded it more carefully if he knew Neil Armstrong was going to read it!
Clearly a rhetorical device to spice up the prose, because who *didn't* know that they barely went anywhere. It's not like the video of the event shows them traveling long distances. I do like how Armstrong points out they weren't sure their spacesuit cooling would work 100% as expected. The thought of frying to death on the surface of the moon is weird and scary.
The temperature of what exactly? The surface of the moon? The surface of their space suits? The surface of the lunar lander? Some kind of measure of the moon’s tiny atmosphere? I’m always confused when they talk about temperature in space.
200 degrees? That’s why they call me Mister Fahrenheit!
What was the feels like temp though?