this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2026
36 points (89.1% liked)
General Discussion
14678 readers
123 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy.World General!
This is a community for general discussion where you can get your bearings in the fediverse. Discuss topics & ask questions that don't seem to fit in any other community, or don't have an active community yet.
🪆 About Lemmy World
🧭 Finding Communities
Feel free to ask here or over in: !lemmy411@lemmy.ca!
Also keep an eye on:
- !newcommunities@lemmy.world
- !communitypromo@lemmy.ca
- !new_communities@mander.xyz
- !communityspotlight@lemmy.world
- !wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca!
For more involved tools to find communities to join: check out Lemmyverse!
💬 Additional Discussion Focused Communities:
- !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca - Note this is for more serious discussions.
- !casualconversation@lemm.ee - The opposite of the above, for more laidback chat!
- !letstalkaboutgames@feddit.uk - Into video games? Here's a place to discuss them!
- !movies@lemm.ee - Watched a movie and wanna talk to others about it? Here's a place to do so!
- !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world - Want to talk politics apart from political news? Here's a community for that!
Rules and Policies
Remember, Lemmy World rules also apply here.
0. See: Rules for Users.
- No bigotry: including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
- Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
- Be thoughtful and helpful: even with ‘silly’ questions. The world won’t be made better by dismissive comments to others on Lemmy.
- Link posts should include some context/opinion in the body text when the title is unaltered, or be titled to encourage discussion.
- Posts concerning other instances' activity/decisions are better suited to !fediverse@lemmy.world or !lemmydrama@lemmy.world communities.
- No Ads/Spamming.
- No NSFW content.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because we can.
While this particular use case is stupid, with the exception of mildly conspiratorial Elysium-type assumptions, overcoming the problem of effective cooling in space is necessary for future space projects. This provides a testing platform for solving the problem.
I always wondered, why not have essentially heat batteries? You could use something like a heat pump to dump heat into a thermal mass for the short term. Maybe use those to power a Stirling generator in a central location? Be like stopping for gas, but also switching out your heat block? Or, maybe like a fuel pre-heater? Heck, you could even have just a high heat capacity material that you dump heat into and then vent superheated matter for fine control thrusters?
This post illustrates a serious lack of knowledge and understanding of how heat transfer and thermodynamic systems work outside of a sci-fi setting.