From: wjtingle@hotmail.com   
      
   On Thursday, January 7, 2021 at 8:36:46 PM UTC-5, salsa.t...@gmail.com wrote:   
   > Hello, new here and all that jazz. I'm working on a space opera setting and   
   one of the things I'm curious about are the materials that could be used to   
   make a radiator. I have an idea on how warship radiators operate, but I'm   
   trying not to break more    
   rules than I need to.    
   >    
   > Basically, the radiators are flexible and can be rolled up into armored   
   compartments to protect them from hostile fire. When deployed, ribbing in the   
   panels stiffens to keep them from flopping about. Are there any materials that   
   can be rigid in one set    
   of circumstances, but flexible in another? Is this even plausible?   
      
   Try heavy gauge aluminum foil, painted black with something flexible like   
   black paint. An incompressible fluid will pressurize and stiffen them, and a   
   roller will retract them and squeeze out the fluid when you want to stow them.   
   The structure should be    
   tubular perpendicular to the roller. Life will be limited, so make it cheap   
   enough to be recycled into beer cans or whatever.   
      
   There are a number of ways of manufacturing these. The fancy way is to use a   
   complicated rolling procedure to make them from a pair of sheets of aluminum,   
   with complicated bonding, rolling, and surface treatments internally and then   
   hydraulically    
   expanded. Or you could just resistance weld foil into the final shape you   
   want. In either case, a spray can of black paint is the final item.   
      
   Good luck,   
   Jack Tingle   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)