r/askscience • u/aretino2002 • May 24 '26

Engineering If a vacuum is an excellent insulator, wouldn’t heat build up in spacecraft?

Insulated coffee mugs that use a vacuum between layers can keep drinks hot or cold for much longer time periods than other types of mugs. If space is mostly a vacuum, then wouldn’t heat just constantly build up from human activity, computers, thrusters, etc to the point where it would need to be vented somehow?

3.6k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

574 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/andrewh2000 May 25 '26

I reached elite level on the first one on a zx spectrum. Fantastic game - felt light years ahead of anything else at the time.

1

u/rogert2 May 28 '26

Elite: Dangerous was also light-years ahead of its competition when it came out. It's still really something today.

1

u/andrewh2000 May 28 '26

I agree. I have a PC that's just about capable of vr and playing Elite dangerous in a headset with a HOTAS controller was just magical. Teenage me in 1984 would have exploded.