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The barbecue roll. The Apollo spacecraft would slowly rotate along it's longitudinal axis while it traveled to the moon to help dissipate heat.
by benihana 12y ago
The barbecue roll. The Apollo spacecraft would slowly rotate along it's longitudinal axis while it traveled to the moon to help dissipate heat.
- mrec 12y agoHmm. That made me wonder about Apollo 13, where the "crew endured temperatures at or below freezing for the bulk of the return flight" [1], apparently [2] because they had to turn off heaters and electronic gear to conserve power. The fact they had heaters suggests that the roll wasn't so much to dump heat as to spread it around, to reduce the risk of structural damage from differential heating [3]. That's presumably less viable on a big structure like the ISS. [1] http://www.spaceline.org/flightchron/apollo13.html http://www.spaceline.org/flightchron/apollo13.html [2] https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121015080310AAoCJB2 https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121015080310A... [3] https://books.google.com/books?id=31GqndM3fk8C&pg=PA419&dq=differential+heating+structural+damage https://books.google.com/books?id=31GqndM3fk8C&pg=PA419&dq=d...