Agreed. And I like the argument so far.dandandaman wrote:yes...but they are all much further out from the sun than the earth...notice that when comets come in closer than about earth/mars they start losing not just trapped gasses, but h20 vapour in big quantities too Another thing to note is that these ice bodies do not have any direct heat (the sun is too far to do anything, or they are in shadows like on the moon (maybe) )....if heated by a fusion reactor...things are going to get pretty hot quick, and the result will be faster than the sublimation of a cometDiGuru wrote:For starters, almost all bodies that make up the solar system consist of ice. Just about any mass (excluding the sun and planets) you come across is made of ice. And they have existed for billions of years so far. And most are tiny: mere meters across.
yesWhen ice vaporizes, it takes heat away from surrounding bodies. As there is no convection in a vacuum, that heat has to come from things directly attached to it.
Sure it would work well, but it would run out quick if the engine was running hot (and was travelling in habitable zone of sun)....So, yes, it would work quite well. The way you want to deploy it would depend on what you want from it. Next to your engine and very slow thermal radiation, it would be your best bet to cool something down.
Ok, it does not have to be ice per se, but that would probably be abundant and cheap.
hmm....I'll post again later when I've thought this through properly...I'm not sure if my arguement will stand up to well
Dan.a
All in all, it is a matter of scale: how much ice, how hot or cold would it be, how much heat do you want to get rid of, etc.
Btw. Water is indeed a pretty bad conductor. But that makes it quite good for cooling and heating: it will spread the heat slowly over the available volume. That's why they use it for central heating and cooling as well.