Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ianai 2058 days ago
Uhh space itself is about 2.7K. Seems like cooling shouldn’t be a problem. There’s probably all sorts of ways to avoid a problem. Even just using a different element altogether.
2 comments

You'd think cooling would be no problem, but it turns out that when your only option is to radiate away heat, that's _very_ slow. We get spoiled here on Earth by conduction and convection, both much easier and faster.
Cooling is the Achilles heel of NTR, requiring massive radiators to remain functional over a long burn.