An irritating Apollo 13 movie note: in the movie, once they power down, everything gets cold and wet “because there’s no heat.” Why this was allowed is beyond me - in truth, they’d roast by their own body heat. The vacuum of space is an INSULATOR. You know those “solar panels” on the International Space Station? Most of them are actually RADIATORS, to dissipate heat into space, otherwise the astronauts would be living (and dying) in an oven.
Except “in truth”, NASA says the temperature dropped to 38 degrees F and condensation started forming everywhere. The movie was correct.
Space is 2.7K, in other words, it is extremely cold.
With no fuel cells, the CM was shut down to conserve electricity. With no electronics running, the temp fell to 38DegF in the LM.
There’s a link in another post with link to a summary report of the incident.
I have read and watched numerous videos (documentaries) about this... Pretty sure that every astronaut involved was freezing his ass off.
I have read and watched numerous videos (documentaries) about this... Pretty sure that every astronaut involved was freezing his ass off.
Surface area versus enclosed volume plays a role in what form thermal management takes. The gold foil encasing space vehicles is a radiant barrier to block absorption of heat from the sun. The spacecraft were also engineered for a certain heat load which included dissipation from electrical equipment operating within the craft. And the ship was designed with an electrical heating system, as the engineering decisions were biased for the natural equilibrium to be on the cooler side.
The cold was bad enough; but, the crew’s source of water was the waste stream of the fuel cells-—hydrogen combined with oxygen results in electricity and water. The crew was sufficiently short of water to affect how much they could consume of food, thus less calories to burn fighting off the cold. Fat calories are more easily burned from exercise but little option for movement is available in the cramped spaces.
>> in truth, they’d roast by their own body heat.
Do you “roast” on a 99 degree day?
It’s not possible for the interior of the capsule to exceed that temperature solely from their “own body heat”.
And as their heat radiates out from the capsule the temperature can only drop.
Physics is hard!
The interior temperature dropped to 38 degrees and moisture did condense on everything.
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-350/ch-13-5.html
You forgot about one method of heat loss. RADIATION. Less than 25 percent of the LEM/Command Module was exposed to sunlight, the remainder was radiating away heat into space.
They weren't in a vacuum... they were in a pressurized capsule with oxygen (and CO2) in it.
So cute. Never change!