Bamboozalist wrote...
Yes because it's totally a sound military decision to have soldiers carrying around weapons that emit a form of radiation that can blind you every time they fire. Emitting radiation in space where things are generally built to be protected from it and doing it on the battlefield planet side are two different things.
Not to mention spaceships have specialized cooling systems and a lot more surface area to work with. Plus, it's noted that radiative cooling only gets them so far, and also that it's....kinda slow. OK, screw it, I'm sick of paraphrasing. Codex time:
Space Combat: Combat Endurance
Heat limits the length and intensity of ship-to-ship combat. Starships generate enormous heat when they fire high-energy weapons, perform maneuvering burns, and run on-board combat electronics.
In combat, warships produce heat more quickly than they can disperse it. As heat builds within a vessel, the crewed spaces become increasingly uncomfortable. Before the heat reaches lethal levels, a ship must win or retreat by entering FTL. After an FTL run, the ships halts, shuts down non-essential systems, and activates the heat radiation gear.
Combat endurance varies by ship design and by the battle's location. Battles in the deep cold of interstellar space can go on for some time. Engagements close to a star are brief. Since habitable worlds are usually close to a star, battles over them are usually more frantic.
and:
Starships: Heat Management
Dispersal of heat generated by onboard systems is a critical issue for a ship. If it cannot deal with heat, the crew may be cooked within the hull.
Radiation is the only way to shed heat in a vacuum. Civilian vessels utilize large, fragile radiator panels that are impossible to armor. Warships use Diffuse Radiator Arrays (DRA), ceramic strips along the exterior of the armored hull. These make the ship appear striped to thermographic sensors. Since the arrangement of the strips depends on the internal configuration of the ship, the patterns for each vessel are unique and striking. On older ships, the DRA strips could become red- or white-hot. Dubbed "tiger stripes" or "war paint" by humans, the glowing DRA had a psychological impact on pirates and irregular forces.
Strip radiators are not as efficient as panels, but if damaged by enemy fire, the ship only loses a small portion of its total radiation capacity. In most cases, a vessel's DRA alone allows it to cruise with no difficulties. Operations deep within solar systems can cause problems.
A ship engaged in combat can produce titanic amounts of heat from maneuvering burns and weapons fire. When fighting in a high heat environment, warships employ high-efficiency "droplet" heat sinks.
In a droplet system, tanks of liquid sodium or lithium absorb heat within the ship. The liquid is vented from spray nozzles near the bow as a thin sheet of millions of micrometer-scale droplets. The droplets are caught at the stern and recycled into the system. A droplet system can sink 10-100 times as much heat as DRA strips.
Droplet sheets resemble a surface ship's wake through water. The wake peels out in sharp turns, spreading a fan of droplets as the ship changes vectors and leaves the coolant behind.
Plus there's the fact that Engineer Adams was talking about the Normandy, a vessel upon which bilions upon billions of credits were spent specifically to cope with heat and other emissions, and which sported a heat sink that was massive for a ship of its size. And we should think this applies to highly compact personal weaponry why exactly?
Modifié par didymos1120, 10 janvier 2011 - 10:52 .
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