You know, all these talk about canon waste heat lore on CV and BM makes me wonder how in the world does people get out of them safely.
I meant, they nearly cook you alive like a pressure cooker inside already. If you try to climb out of a combat vehicle or battlemech when they are still cooling down, you definitely are going to get your hand burnt without protective clothing.
Heck, how did infantry even climb up a battlemech if that's the case? Any direct contact they have with a functional, running, battlemech is going to sear their skin off painfully.
it wouldn't be that bad. you have to remember that the heat scale does not represent actual temperature, it just represents how saturated the cooling system on the mech is.
basically, a mech is crisscrossed with coolant lines designed to pick up the heat from the weapons, equipment, and myomers, and pump the heated coolant to the heat sinks, which are basically radiators that vent the heat away. the more heat in the coolant, the less able it is to pick up new heat, and as a result systems stop working right.
sorta like when your car overheats. the engine itself is still putting out the same amount of heat as it normally does, but the coolant system is not working at full potential due to leaks or environmental factors, it can't get rid of that head fast enough, and as a result the engine stops working. but the high temps don;t extend to the car's doors or trunk, just the engine compartment.
on a mech, if it is overheating, the main danger would be touching the weapons or the heat-sink-radiators. the armor shouldn't be all that hot.
the cockpit heat issue is deceptive.. the cockpit life support system, including the A/C, would be tied into the main cooling network. when weapons get fired and other high heat output activities occur, the coolant network would stop being able to pick up the comparatively minor heat from the cockpit, because the heat gradient wouldn't b high enough. indeed, you'd probably get heat coming
out of the system instead, much like how the A/C on a car that is running hot blows warm air no matter what setting it is on. presumably the cockpit has a secondary system separate from the main coolant network that kicks in when that happens, to offset that effect and keep things from getting too bad.
