In any case getting back on topic. Fins could act as heatsinks. but only when the ship is doing something. And they'd be a horrible vunrability on a warship.
Right.
Wouldn't it then be better to have multiple smaller fins instead of just one big one? If yopu want to rapidly transfer heat you want big surface area and multiple branched surfaces have more surface area than one big surface.
Kind of like lung alveoli - They have much more surface area for gaseous transfer than of there was a large sac of equivalent volume in there.
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In any case getting back on topic. Fins could act as heatsinks. but only when the ship is doing something. And they'd be a horrible vunrability on a warship.
Right.
Wouldn't it then be better to have multiple smaller fins instead of just one big one? If yopu want to rapidly transfer heat you want big surface area and multiple branched surfaces have more surface area than one big surface.
Kind of like lung alveoli - They have much more surface area for gaseous transfer than of there was a large sac of equivalent volume in there.
Maybe something like Villi in the intestines?
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While somewhat visceral... That is quite correct. Just have a long membranes with millions of microscopic heat dissipations urfaces sticking out of it. Or something, I dunno.
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In Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, the ships had extensible boom-mounted heat sinks.
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Weapons mounts only need massive bracing if they have to suffer really bad recoil. Missiles and other active flight systems should need heavy bracing. Light guns (like say anti-fighter weapons) that don't have massive recoil can also be mounted here. If they break then you send your egineers EVA to fix it after battle, or you blow the wing off and live without it.
Mounting missiles externally does allow you have a single massive volley that internal tubes can't match with the same ship volume. Your warheads might be dangerous to have exposed (i.e. antimatter) or it might pose a minimal threat (i.e. fusion where you have a relatively weak conventional trigger, a stronger fission blast, and a massive deuterium blast with the real punch). If a micrometeorite hits a fusion missile the missile (and perhaps the mount point) is screwed, however you do not set off the chain fusion reaction so you watch the deuterium waft harmlessly by. If your ship can be seriously damaged by the conventional blasting cap, or even the fission blast ... you shouldn't be making cap ships (except as carriers and anti-fighter/missile ships) the amount of power in a single fusion warhead dwarfs those with ease. A cap ship that can be seriously screwed by a single missile doesn't stand a chance against a swarm of fighters.
Heat loss is a nice idea, but I'd prefer to just let some radiator lines drag behind me (lower target profile head on). Two flat wings (as opposed to many wings at multiple angles) have the advantage of having a very small target profile from one approach (while increasing target profile from another). If you are looking at engagements primarily head on then it's better to go with the smaller profile there and worse above and below. You expect to be hit from all sides the two flat wings likely suck.
As I said, the radiator fins would suck horribly on a warship.
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So does getting cooked alive by the waste heat from the powerplant(s) and engines. Spacecraft need heat radiators to keep the equipment and crew from cooking. Wing like structures are a convinent place to mount semi-protected radiators that can't be completely blown off by one or two weapons hits.
On a related note, heat rejection in space works by radiation only. Multiple heat radiators are of no benefit unless every rad had an unexposed view of empty space. Radiators that self-shadow are worse than useless.
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