11–20 of 56 posts
There’s a funny amount of beef around using it in art, you have Anish Kapoor who bought exclusive rights to use Vantablack artistically and man of the people Stuart Semple offering his versions Black 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 getting ever blacker.
As someone in this field, I don't really think this is a good idea. We already have issues maintaining proper thermals without turning the satellite into a giant light-absorbing thermal mass. Painting it black is just asking for additional thermal management budget and mass additions.
True, but I think that could cause issues for astronomers. Instead if seeing small points of light they could see fast moving black spots obscuring stellar objects. In a way looking like eclipses.
Astronomers don't look first and then aim their cameras, and most interesting features (essentially all of them) require long exposures, which would make this problem a slight, one-time variance in brightness.
As someone in this field, I don't really think this is a good idea. We already have issues maintaining proper thermals without turning the satellite into a giant light-absorbing thermal mass. Painting it black is just asking for additional thermal management budget and mass additions.
That's the cost of pollution.
I'm not sure making space debris invisible to visible light is a good thing, either.
As someone in this field, I don't really think this is a good idea. We already have issues maintaining proper thermals without turning the satellite into a giant light-absorbing thermal mass. Painting it black is just asking for additional thermal management budget and mass additions.
The equilibrium temperature of a polished aluminum surface at 1AU from the sun is 416K, hot enough to melt polyethylene and at least weaken many of the relevant aerospace plastics like the PET in mylar film.
Painting polished aluminum black drastically raises emissivity along with the lowered reflectivity, and brings its behavior closer to a blackbody.
So does allowing aluminum to oxidize, which it does almost instantaneously in atmosphere. So it's not like it's going to change anything drastically.
The reason this seems like it should change things a lot is that you're used to convectively cooled matte surfaces on Earth, where emissivity and radiative cooling is a less relevant factor and the only significant effect of painting something black is primarily that it absorbs more energy.
As someone in this field, I don't really think this is a good idea. We already have issues maintaining proper thermals without turning the satellite into a giant light-absorbing thermal mass. Painting it black is just asking for additional thermal management budget and mass additions.
As someone in this field, I don't really think this is a good idea. We already have issues maintaining proper thermals without turning the satellite into a giant light-absorbing thermal mass. Painting it black is just asking for additional thermal management budget and mass additions.
The blackbody equilibrium temperature at 1AU from the sun is about 278K. All satellite materials are fine at 278K because that's within the expected range of storage and atmospheric launch temperatures. The equilibrium temperature of a polished aluminum surface at 1AU from the sun is 416K, hot enough to melt polyethylene and at least weaken many of the relevant aerospace plastics like the PET in mylar film. Painting…