How do they cool computers in space where normal fans wouldn’t work?
In: Engineering
This is kind of an aside (looks like others have given you an answer more broadly) but fans are actually very important in space. For something like a computer, there’s no ‘up’ so warm air won’t rise on its own. It just sits where it is. The inside of a computer could get very hot, hitter then they would on earth, without a fan.
Likewise, astronauts have to sleep with a small fan, otherwise their exhaled co2 can build up near them in the less turbulent air.
If you watch videos from the space station it is very loud.
You don’t really have to *try* to cool things in space, because space is so cold it sucks the heat out of everything in it. The manned crafts up there have to spend a lot of resources keeping the area warm enough for humans to live. If you REALLY have to cool something down you can just turn down the heater, so to say, and it will be well below freezing temp in less than five minutes.
Edit: My bad everyone, what I thought was a simple question and answer, I was completely wrong. Leaving it up for people to learn.
Same way they cool everything else in space: by radiating the heat into space. Everything in space is covered my a special white paint that has two important properties: it is really good at reflecting light (which is why it is white) and it has really good thermal conductivity. This means it absorbs very little heat from the sun, but lets the heat generated in the spacecraft (including heat from computers) escape into space.
Why wouldn’t they work?
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