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by dsq 949 days ago
>Cooling is a bigger issue in space

Is this due to the raw sunlight? If so, wouldn't using a sunshield immediately reduce the heat to far below zero? Or is circulation the problem?

1 comments

You only have radiative (heat moving via electromagnetic emission aka photons) cooling in space. On Earth you also have convective (heat moving via moving fluid) and conductive (heat moving via permeating a material) cooling to move heat away from a source. Radiative cooling is by far the worst way to move heat.

The space station has a massive cooling system, https://www.space.com/21059-space-station-cooling-system-exp.... If you were to be ejected into a vacuum, you would first heat up from stored chemical energy in your body being released, and then cool over a very long period to a very cold temperature, not instantly freeze solid.

Something has to be very hot for you to feel it via electromagnetic emission (emitting in IR), and it will always transfer more energy by touch. If something is white hot, then it is emitting in the visible spectrum. But in an atmosphere, only a small amount of total energy emission is being released as photons, much more is released as kinetic energy to the surrounding air. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation