4 ms·

The other problem with RTGs is they scale very badly.

• Faaak 9y ago
  how ?
  • andygates 9y ago
    They're very low power, make a lot of waste low-grade heat, and use an inefficient electricity generation approach.
    • masklinn 9y ago
      > make a lot of waste low-grade heat That's probably the biggest issue for deep space it's extremely difficult to shed heat in hard vacuum (without ejecting mass and its heat with it) as you can only radiate it away.
      • acidburnNSA 9y ago
        And radiative heat transfer scaled with temperature to the fourth power so it would be easy to do if you had materials that could handle really high temperatures for long times.
        • wbl 9y ago
          But then your Carnot efficiency goes way down.