11-12-2018, 12:18 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: near Seattle WA USA
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waste heat
Does GURPS Space offer any solution to the problem of waste heat in space? Giant radiators? Superscience that dumps waste heat through radiators that are too small to be thermodynamically workable, but offer a nod to reality? Hand-wave? Dismissed altogether for the sake of playability?
If there's a rule in GURPS Space, how is it special cased in GURPS Traveller? |
11-12-2018, 06:06 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: waste heat
It was never mentioned and what always happens is people get REALLY, REALLY, angry about the subject because it would render stealth moot and you BETTER know that.
I assume that there are various types of heat sinks including shielding for engines, disposable containers (which makes the timing of when to drop a nice tactical point). I also assume there is an advantage in being up-sun. And that one of the products obtained from Otherside (an unknown civilization that trades from beyond Known Space), is superefficient heat dumps of various kinds. But basically Canon does not seem to talk much about it.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
11-12-2018, 06:11 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: waste heat
There's a mention of radiators somewhere (I think in Spaceships), but they sort of amount to 'oh, and you might need radiators'. Realistic size radiators tend to be incompatible with tactically interesting drives, armor, or weapons.
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11-12-2018, 06:38 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: waste heat
Probably there should be superscience methods of dealing with heat and to heck with it. Otherwise it reduces combat to a slugging match.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
11-13-2018, 01:02 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: near Seattle WA USA
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Re: waste heat
Perhaps a reasonable superscience solution would be a device that is specifically designed to dispose of waste heat, and is unnecessary in places where waste heat can be disposed of by other means (oceans, rivers, air, huge fixed space radiators, etc.). Since gravitic propulsion is an existing Traveller superscience, maybe the device could be called the "gravitic radiator", and it's optional on planet-bound power plants.
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11-13-2018, 02:56 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: waste heat
Also as no one knows much about Jump Space there is no limit besides plot compatibility as to what we say about it. Nor come to think about the properties of Jump Engines.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
11-13-2018, 06:12 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: waste heat
As long as we no longer have to burn tons and tons of LHyd for energy to store in jump capacitors, we can make those heat sinks instead, and retcon the properties of zuchai crystals to be heat sinks that can be induced to dump their store heat into jumpspace.
Of course, if we wave our hands furiously enough near the heat sinks, that alone will cool them off... |
11-13-2018, 06:44 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: waste heat
It's been proposed, but has the flaw that liquid hydrogen is a cruddy heat sink.
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11-13-2018, 08:11 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: waste heat
Sorry; I didn't mean to suggest the fuel, but the jump capacitors. (Following along with the other suggestions to connect the magic heatsinks to powerplants or jumpspace, and repurposing the magic jump capacitors into magic heat capacitors.)
Last edited by Anaraxes; 11-13-2018 at 08:30 PM. |
11-14-2018, 11:33 AM | #10 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: waste heat
SDBs, riders and monitors don't have jump capacitors.
They do have gravitics - grav plates and acceleration compensation systems. My solution to waste heat - 'gravitic heat sinks'. |
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