I’m just curious as to the process and behavior of the surface temp of a shuttle once there’s virtually no particles in contact with the craft.
I’m aware space is cold due to the absence of matter,
But does a space shuttle take a much longer time frame to cool down with less matter available to transfer the heat of the craft to, or does the lack of matter cause the shuttle to cool rapidly?
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It will slowly radiate over time. I am not sure if the temperatures the shuttle experiences on launch, but on re-entry it gets really hot because of friction with the atmosphere which is why the under side has heat shields on it.
In low earth orbit where the shuttle operates there are hardly any particles to carry any heat away by convection so the primary mode of heat transfer up there is radiation. It’s why the shuttle is white since white reflects a great deal of incident radiation.
Heat transfer by radiation is the most ineffective mode of the three (conduction, convection, and radiation) so it also results in the slowest rate of temperature changes.
Heat can be lost via conduction, convection and radiation. Radiation is all that works in the vacuum of space. Spacecraft have radiators. Not often mentioned in sci fi stories, but a few have gotten into the mechanics of it.
The space shuttles didn’t get all that hot when they exited the atmosphere because they weren’t going all that fast. Rocket launches first go up to get out of the atmosphere, then go fast to get up to orbit speeds. When shuttles or capsules come back in, they use the atmosphere for braking rather than burning rocket fuel to slow down.
But yes, cooling things off in space is harder. With no air, you have to radiate away the heat rather than convection. Not so much the shuttles or anything with a heat-shield. More like, anything that has computers or takes energy to do work. All our deep probes use RTG nuclear batteries which have a lot of fins for cooling. (And all that works against them when in direct sunlight).
Convection is when atoms rub each other and exchange heat, the velocity of the electrons, and then leave taking away the heat. Air-conditioning.
Radiation is slower. Everything emits radiation. The infrared wavelengths are heat, but any energy leaving the system cools it down. Usually, when it’s around other stuff that’s also radiating, it’s a net zero effect and this doesn’t do much. But in the void of space, that radiation leaves and the stars don’t heat you up much.
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