Hmmm, maybe. But same question. Astrophage can sink a ton of heat energy, so you theoretically wouldn’t need radiators. Granted, it would only let you cool things down to 98°C (or so, can’t remember the exact temp) which isn’t exactly cool. But still.
However I’m gonna stick with your interpretation, since I like that better.
Yeah, you would still need radiators if all it can cool down to is 98C. Otherwise Ryan Gosling would be slowly sous vided as he slept. I love pointing out the radiators on the ISS as an example!
The solar panels are the dark ones, but the white ones are the radiators. Note the radiators are perpendicular to the solar panels. You want the solar panels to absorb sunlight, but not the radiators. Solar panels get oriented perpendicular to the Sun’s rays, while radiators get positioned parallel.
Actually though, let’s take another look at the ship. After looking at this image, they may in fact be solar panels.
The panels are black. Also note that they’re oriented to catch the star’s rays in this picture. The sunlight is illuminating the side of the ship, and the panels are arranged to catch this light. If they were radiators, we would be seeing them edge-on in this picture.
Good point on the radiators vs astrophage. Gotta say I didn’t think about what would need to be radiated.
Thanks for the pictures, definitely nice to visualize it! I will continue to think that they’re radiators as that makes more sense, and it was just a goof that they were rotated the wrong way. Makes me less angry than there being solar panels on an astrophage powered ship. Unless it is there as a backup method?
Another theory. The electrical needs of the ship and life support must be a rounding error compared to the power output of the engines. The energy required to accelerate up to and down from relativistic speeds absolutely dwarfs any onboard power use.
While the ship is under acceleration, power is no problem. You siphon off 0.1% of the astrophage drive’s power, and that’s more than enough for the ship’s onboard power needs.
But what about when the ship isn’t under acceleration? If your engines were infinitely throttleable, you could run the engine at 0.1% output just to use it as a generator. But rather than design an engine that can run at such a huge range of output levels, it may be more mass efficient just to slap some solar panels on the craft.
This also makes sense for the mission the ship was designed for. The only time it’s ever in deep space is when it’s accelerating. The main drive only turns off when the ship is already in orbit in the inner solar system of the target system. So the only time you ever need power but not the main drive is at a location where solar panels would work well.
I think this may explain it best. They ship could be powered entirely by astrophage. But trying to make one engine that can work at such a huge range of power outputs just isn’t practical. It’s easier just to have some supplemental solar panels to use while the craft isn’t accelerating.
I don’t wanna be the “well the book said…” Asshole, but it is one of my favorite books. So…
Well the book said that they actually have a dedicated (well a few, redundancy, you know?) Astrophage powered DC generators. They turn miniscule amounts of astrophage into electric power for the ship to run its systems. There’s also battery backups.
Minor spoiler for something that had more detail in the book, but also happened in the movie (towards the end, with an explosion).
Tap for spoiler
The original Science Officers blew up in both the book and movie, because in the book they were experimenting with a corner case of the generator that could cause it to overheat and explode. However they thought they were doing the experiment with a nanogram of astrophage, but they ended up doing it with a milligram, which is 1,000,000 times the energy density. So instead of the generator simply overheating and maybe menting, it blew up the entire building, even atomizing the metal and everything.
The spin drives also don’t generate electricity for thrust, so there isn’t really any way to “siphon” it off.
However I am inclined to believe your train of thought, if nothing else maybe they just didn’t have a way to use the DC generator while fuel wasn’t flowing for the engines (although that seems like a design flaw, but the ship was definitely rushed)
The non balanced centrifuge scene ruined my immersion… Otherwise awesome movie and pretty faithful adaptation of the book.
Ah I had noticed that but it was barely on screen so I wasn’t sure if I had missed something.
Yeah, the centrifuge is really my biggest issue with the movie.
And then fact that the ship has solar panels.
Other than those two minor nitpicks, it’s a fantastic movie. PHM is one of my favorite books, so I was pretty happy with the movie overall.
I didn’t interpret those as solar panels. I thought they were radiators.
Hmmm, maybe. But same question. Astrophage can sink a ton of heat energy, so you theoretically wouldn’t need radiators. Granted, it would only let you cool things down to 98°C (or so, can’t remember the exact temp) which isn’t exactly cool. But still.
However I’m gonna stick with your interpretation, since I like that better.
Yeah, you would still need radiators if all it can cool down to is 98C. Otherwise Ryan Gosling would be slowly sous vided as he slept. I love pointing out the radiators on the ISS as an example!
The solar panels are the dark ones, but the white ones are the radiators. Note the radiators are perpendicular to the solar panels. You want the solar panels to absorb sunlight, but not the radiators. Solar panels get oriented perpendicular to the Sun’s rays, while radiators get positioned parallel.
Actually though, let’s take another look at the ship. After looking at this image, they may in fact be solar panels.
The panels are black. Also note that they’re oriented to catch the star’s rays in this picture. The sunlight is illuminating the side of the ship, and the panels are arranged to catch this light. If they were radiators, we would be seeing them edge-on in this picture.
So yeah, it seems they really are solar panels.
Good point on the radiators vs astrophage. Gotta say I didn’t think about what would need to be radiated.
Thanks for the pictures, definitely nice to visualize it! I will continue to think that they’re radiators as that makes more sense, and it was just a goof that they were rotated the wrong way. Makes me less angry than there being solar panels on an astrophage powered ship. Unless it is there as a backup method?
Another theory. The electrical needs of the ship and life support must be a rounding error compared to the power output of the engines. The energy required to accelerate up to and down from relativistic speeds absolutely dwarfs any onboard power use.
While the ship is under acceleration, power is no problem. You siphon off 0.1% of the astrophage drive’s power, and that’s more than enough for the ship’s onboard power needs.
But what about when the ship isn’t under acceleration? If your engines were infinitely throttleable, you could run the engine at 0.1% output just to use it as a generator. But rather than design an engine that can run at such a huge range of output levels, it may be more mass efficient just to slap some solar panels on the craft.
This also makes sense for the mission the ship was designed for. The only time it’s ever in deep space is when it’s accelerating. The main drive only turns off when the ship is already in orbit in the inner solar system of the target system. So the only time you ever need power but not the main drive is at a location where solar panels would work well.
I think this may explain it best. They ship could be powered entirely by astrophage. But trying to make one engine that can work at such a huge range of power outputs just isn’t practical. It’s easier just to have some supplemental solar panels to use while the craft isn’t accelerating.
I don’t wanna be the “well the book said…” Asshole, but it is one of my favorite books. So…
Well the book said that they actually have a dedicated (well a few, redundancy, you know?) Astrophage powered DC generators. They turn miniscule amounts of astrophage into electric power for the ship to run its systems. There’s also battery backups.
Minor spoiler for something that had more detail in the book, but also happened in the movie (towards the end, with an explosion).
Tap for spoiler
The original Science Officers blew up in both the book and movie, because in the book they were experimenting with a corner case of the generator that could cause it to overheat and explode. However they thought they were doing the experiment with a nanogram of astrophage, but they ended up doing it with a milligram, which is 1,000,000 times the energy density. So instead of the generator simply overheating and maybe menting, it blew up the entire building, even atomizing the metal and everything.
The spin drives also don’t generate electricity for thrust, so there isn’t really any way to “siphon” it off.
However I am inclined to believe your train of thought, if nothing else maybe they just didn’t have a way to use the DC generator while fuel wasn’t flowing for the engines (although that seems like a design flaw, but the ship was definitely rushed)