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Isn't space super-cold? I mean, if you pull air out of a tube, the stretched air absorbs calories (–or cools down, which is the principle of a fridge with other

• TylerE 10y ago
  Space isn't cold. It has very low temperature. These are not the same thing. Because space has extremely low density thermal radiation doesn't really work very well... it's very hard for a vehicle in a vacuum to dump heat...there is no medium to receive the energy!
  • lisper 10y ago
    > Space isn't cold. It has very low temperature. These are not the same thing. That's news to me. What do you think "cold" means if not a synonym for "low temperature"? > Because space has extremely low density thermal radiation doesn't really work very well... it's very hard for a vehicle in a vacuum to dump heat...there is no medium to receive the energy! No, that's completely wrong. It is very easy to radiate heat into space as long as your radiator is not pointed at the sun. What you can't do is convect heat away, which makes it hard to transfer heat from the hot part of a spacecraft to the cold part. But getting rid of the heat once you've transferred it to a radiator is really easy. In fact, some parts of a spacecraft need heaters to keep them warm if they don't get sun exposure.