Should I or Shouldn't I?

[oleg]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
I don't know what's the point of having wings in space.....
Unless for some reason the guns on the tips have a minimum separation distance.....

Actually, star ships WILL have wings in space

Not for flying of course but for cooling. Imagine some future mighty space destroyer. It must have a very powerfull power plant or engine. However good is thermoisolation, some heat will leak to the hull. Now, the only way to dissipate it in vacuum is radiation. For that purpose ship should have a big surfice area, something like solar batteries on MIR or International Space Station. Or something different but very wing-like. IIRC, when people designed spaceship model for 2001:SpaceOdessey, they want to put big wing-like radiator pannel but it was rejected because audience who supposedly knows not very much about space travel might think it is "not realistic" and cheesy.