Venting: An Engineering Perspective
Phaedron Daxis
Tri-Tachyon Captain Training Program, New York IX
While we do not understand much of the Domain's High Tech, the process of Venting in modern starships is quite ancient in origin and is fairly well-understood by field engineers. This paper briefly attempts to explain and de-mystify "Flux" and provide information to novice Pilots wishing to someday captain their own starship. For greater detail, book a consult with your Professor of Engineering (Starship Systems).
Flux is
heat (also known as "thermal load". All activities aboard a starship under weigh generate some heat; any machine or computer will generate a certain amount of waste heat during normal operations, which, absent any unusual load, is passively radiated away via radiators.
However, thermal loads during combat operations are considerably greater. A machinegun produces quite a lot of waste heat per duty cycle, far too much to radiate away passively. Other systems add far more load, and it cannot all be removed via passive cooling. This is a direct threat to a starship's electronics, materials and personnel.
Therefore, ships use Flux Vents, which are
active cooling systems- they use
heat pipes to transfer as much heat as possible into locations where it heats water and is released as steam. The steam is then vented out into space under its own pressure, taking the heat with it.
As an added bonus, the systems on most ships can use the thrust being generated this way to smooth out spin and alter a ship's velocity. However, the net effect on velocity is negative; a starship with any Flux will accelerate more slowly than one without, because it's losing velocity to the effects of Venting. Generally, the Domain engineers appear to have regarded turning Venting into +Y velocity with distrust, presumably because it made ships more prone to un-controlled behavior, so they accepted a net negative to forward acceleration instead.
Because this method of semi-passive Venting is designed to use low amounts of energy and not be disruptive to ship systems, it cannot always radiate enough heat. Therefore, Flux Capacitors use a storage medium with a high heat capacity (typically, copper sheathing around water) to store heat until it can be vented away later.
These capacitors, however, have practical limits, and once again, the heat must be removed. Therefore, combat spacecraft use a process called* "Crash Venting". Crash Venting is far more complex and extensive than regular Venting; while in the middle of this process, water is being pumped through all of the capacitors, physically transferring the heat to Vents and flushing the hot water and steam out of the spacecraft. This requires most major systems to shut down so that the pumps can operate as quickly as possible, as vibrations from equipment can cause vortices in the fluid flow and greatly slow it down or, worse yet, cause the pipes to explode under pressure. However, at the end of the process, all of the heat has been transferred outside the spacecraft.
The process of Crash Venting is visually spectacular; huge jets of water droplets and steam rapidly form into ice crystals as they radiate heat into space, giving the ship the appearance of being surrounded by rainbow-colored clouds as light is diffracted by the droplets and making a lot of noise within the spacecraft while it's taking place.
Due to the nature of the process, if more Vents are present, Crash Venting can be performed more quickly, as they are used. Certain individuals have put powerful pumps into their customized spacecraft, which also increase the speed at which this can be done, although this not recommended for pilots who don't understand the process of Crash Venting and cannot make the required modifications properly.
Hard Flux represents capacitors that are so full of heat that they are now requiring the use of some passive Venting to keep from increasing past their failure points. This is a drain on the Vents and represents a narrowing of thermal capacity, which has dangerous consequences if ignored.
When a ship has reached maximum Hard Flux levels, it is said to "overload", because all systems must shut down immediately, other than life-support and propulsion, until the heat levels have returned to safe norms. The static discharges seen dancing across the surface of Overloaded vessels are the result of high-energy capacitors radiating into space in order to reduce the thermal load as rapidly as possible in order to save the ship from dangerous levels of heat build-up. This often causes random static discharges, which are showy but quite harmless to properly-designed equipment.
*Totally made that up. The rest of it's Science or vaguely-plausible
