On 11/2/2014 3:08 PM, Lostgallifreyan wrote:
Jerry Stuckle wrote in news:m36209$kk3$1@dont-
email.me:

No, I don't think any part of the ISS is in "constant shadow". I
believe it rotates as it orbits the earth, and different parts of it are
in the shade at different times. I could be wrong, though - I've never
been there


Fair enough. I know that Apollo used to do the 'barbeque roll', but as far as
I know there's less need of it on the ISS for whatever reason. Maybe they use
the solar panels for shade part of the time, there's a lot of those... Or
maybe it's in Earth's shadow often enough to get by... Or maybe it rolls
constantly and I just had no idea.

I think the barbeque effect is because the capsule does not spread the
heat very evenly. The temperature of space (including the sun's
radiation) at earth's orbit is about the temperature of the surface of
the earth. Here is the page where I found this.

http://www.wwheaton.com/waw/mad/mad5.html
*****
For the special case of a perfectly black, highly conductive sphere in
the Solar System a distance R from the Sun, absorbing solar radiation
from one side, but radiating in all directions equally, it turns out
that the temperature drops with distance from the Sun as the square root
of 1/R:

T = 277 K (1 AU/R)½
*****

Assuming this equation is correct, the temperature of the object
described is just 4 °C at Earth's orbit. Of course the earth is warmer
because it is warmed from the inside as well as from the sun.

Somewhere around 13 AUs the temperature reaches 77 °K, the boiling point
of N2, which is much cooler than the critical temperature of a number of
superconductors.

--

Rick