Kaelen’s first instinct was conduction. “Just sink the heat into the lunar regolith,” he muttered, flipping to Chapter 3. But the numbers were brutal: lunar soil was a poor conductor. The heat would build up faster than it could diffuse. The reactor’s silicon carbide housing would reach critical temperature in under an hour.
Radiation. His last hope. Kaelen stared at the Stefan–Boltzmann law in Chapter 12. In a vacuum, radiation was the only game in town. He grabbed a roll of thin aluminized mylar—normally used for insulation—and a canister of dark, soot-like carbon powder from an old air filter. Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer
Kaelen opened the emergency vent. No coolant, no moving parts—just pure electromagnetic waves carrying energy away. He watched his suit’s thermometer. The reactor’s temperature stopped climbing. Then, slowly, it began to fall. Kaelen’s first instinct was conduction