Reply To: specific foreign languages ?

[vansig]

zapkitty wrote:

micron-gap thermal photovoltaics

This could be excellent if it compares favorably with the equivalent increase in power/radiators in mass and volume.

But the recovery of 80% of the thermal from reactor and drives as electric would do great things for radiator size etc if the mass of the dots gear doesn’t eat the margin gained.

With the current stats that would give us a DPF box running at .35 MWe (!) and a double-faced radiator of 66 m2… a square just over 8 meters on a side that masses 1.3 tons…

I like it!

So what you need, then, is for your thermo-photovoltaics to weigh in at < 500 kg total. I think these could be made quite compact, especially if they can be built into the radiator structure.

By the way, One of the links to their description was broken, but here’s another,
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/thermal-photovoltaics-solar-power-mtpv-higher-efficiency.php
seems to me, that the vibrating mushroom cap generates an alternating current, which is rectified. Since heat is broad spectrum, the sizes of these would vary along the temperature gradient, making them extremely efficient emitters, too (e >.99).