Can Men Travel in Space???

I heard an argument that goes something like this...

Space is like a thermos, and a thermos is like space.

Within a thermos is a self-contained vacuum which keeps things hot and cold all day long. How is this possible? When a liquid is hot, say coffee, its molecules bounce or vibrate at a higher frequency than a liquid at room temperature. As these high-frequency molecules bounce against slower-moving molecules, say, air at room temperature, the coffee molecules slow down and the coffee gets cold. In a vacuum (thermos), there are no molecules for the fast-moving molecules to interact with, so the fast-moving molecules move at the same rate as they did before (your coffee stays hot).

The same deal goes with cold liquids in a thermos. Their molecules will only speed up when encountering faster molecules... in a vacuum (thermos), there are no fast-molecules - no molecules at all, so your koolaid stays cool all day long.

Space ought to work the same way. If a spaceship comes out of the shadow of the earth into the light of the sun, photons and other radiation from the sun should heat up the outer hull of the spaceship first, and then the inside...and since the heat (fast-moving molecules) cannot dissapate (interact with other molecules, cooler molecules) because space is a vacuum, you'd think the astronauts would cook.

Air conditioning units wouldn't work for this exact same reason.

Please, someone give me a reason why this hypothesis is wrong.

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If the vacuum is the dynamic that keeps the coffee hot, why doesn't the coffee stay hot forever?

Aren't the insulation properties of the thermos responsible for providing hot coffee at lunch (and tepid coffee at dinner)?

Your hypothesis is correct, and scientists were aware of this long ago (1940's and earlier.)

Space ships are constructed like giant thermos bottles with very sophisticated materials. They also spin slowly, which helps maintain a constant temperature (since heat is lost and gained gradually).
www.space.com...

I think that the reason for a vacuum is that it is a buffer between the inside and outside of the the thermos. In a normal bottle the exterior temperature effects the shell of the bottle which in turn effect the contents. In a thermos there are two shells, and in between the two is a vacuum. Without molocules to effect it the inside of a thermos stays hot.

I think that the designers and engineer of the space program were aware of this and so put heat resistant tiles and other such things on the space-crafts exterior. You dont have a hypothesis, you have a fact.

Is Space not a vacuum?

So really, space would be like the inside of the thurmos, and the inside of the ship would be the outside of it

there are the three typical modes of heat transfer:

conduction
convection
radiation

conduction is the transfer of heat via physical contact.

convection is the heat transfer that is acclerated via fluid currents carrying the heat away.

radiation is independent of any physical contact and is proportional to the fourth power of the difference in temperatures of two bodies.

the effective temperature of space is near absolute zero.

the egyptians used to make ice by laying shallow, wide pans of water in the desert during cloudless nights. the heat from the water would radiate out to space because there were no clouds to block it. were there clouds, the heat would radiate from the water at a much slower rate because the temperature difference from the clouds would be almost negible.

all heat transfer from the sun is via radiation (the sun is very hot).

different surfaces absorb and radiate heat at different rates. 'black bodies' are those that emit and absorb the highest possible amount of radiation. this is used as a starting point when determining the amount of heat transfered via radiation between two bodies.

a thermos negates as much as possible the flow of heat via conduction and convection because the only heat transfer possible through a vacuum is radiation. that is were there is that shiny stuff in a thermos -- the 'opposite' of a black body ( heat radiation is reflected and not absorbed. if a material absorbs radiation poorly, then it will also emit radiation poorly).

To go back on what Byrd briefly covered.

Two things, one there is only ONE source of significant heat in space, hence only half of the ship can face that heat source at any time, since there is no ambient atmosphere to conduct heat, all that is heated is the one side facing the sun.

This is why when Apollo was going to the moon, they'd go into "Barbeque" mode, where they slowly rotated the ship I think one rotation an hour, to get an "even bake". This helped regulate temperature on the ship, without added effort of further life supports. Which is why when Apollo 13 had its problem, it suddenly got very cold, no moderate heat regulation, and no more rotation against the sun, their exposure to it was limited to certain spots on the ship.

The only real reason I've ever heard of man not going into space, is the Radiation, but since we've done it before, obviously this is not as much a concern as moon hoax conspiratists think, at least, as far as concerning the van adam's belt.

Sincerely,
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