Heat disposition in space

I understood one of the big challenges in space 
was not cooking (due to all the heat generated 
by your crew, your equipment, your weapons, 
your drives, etc.) combined with your inability to 
radiate it effectively (I believe this has 
something to do with space being a vaccuum 
and this being a fair insulator?). Now, IIRC, the 
shuttle deals with this woe by jettisoning 
material into which it has jammed a bunch of 
heat it wants to say goodbye to (but I could be 
mistaken). 

I've also heard about heaters now that use 
directed heat - they heat what they point at - 
essentially an IR radiator or something of the 
sort. Now, these are electrically powered. 

But is it conceivable that the waste heat from 
the ship could be usefully transformed into 
emittable radiation (and directionally 
controllable at that)? Or would this process 
never be efficient enough to meet the major 
need? I ask, because if this was the case, having 
movable wings that could radiate heat would be 
a good thing.... you could then radiate your 
heat *away* from a direction you wanted to be 
stealthy in (assuming you knew which direction 
that was!). 

I find the whole space is cold, space is hot thing 
interesting. In some sci-fi, you see it depicted 
as amazingly cold, in others, things boil. The 
truth is, if I've got it right, space (a vaccuum) is 
temperatureless (no matter to have a 
temperature). The heat is the heat you bring 
with you or generate, and the cold is the result 
of things like your O2 being allowed to vent into 
a zero pressure.... thus sucking in heat to 
expand (endothermic?). Kind of a neat 
combination of problems, really. 

Tomb
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Mr. Thomas Barclay
Software Developer & Systems Analyst
thomas.barclay@stargrunt.ca
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