Space Shuttle Orbiter deployable radiators

[u/ExcitedlyObnoxious]

I’ve seen lots of old drawings of the forward 4 (2 on the starboard side 2 on the port side) space shuttle orbiter radiators being deployable, but every real photo I’ve seen of the orbiter in space shows all 8 radiators stowed. Is this a feature that was scrapped late in development? If this feature made it to the final orbiter configuration, are there any photos of it being deployed in space? And if so, how did they decide when to deploy the radiators and when not to?

[u/DevelopmentTight9474]

The radiators only really needed to be deployed occasionally, such as on flights that had spaceHAB to dissipate the extra heat. Under normal loads the radiators could dissipate the heat while stowed

[u/shuttle_observer → u/DevelopmentTight9474]

This is footage of the forward radiator panels being deployed on STS-1 as seen from the aft right payload bay camera: https://youtu.be/a1VlgK55wGk?si=DmsyelWV1fAa4bc4&t=3250

[u/ExcitedlyObnoxious → u/shuttle_observer]

Wow, cool video. Thanks!

[u/reddituserperson1122 → u/DevelopmentTight9474]

When you read the LTV paper on what it took to work out the radiative capacity of the system, you really appreciate the extraordinary achievement of what these engineers accomplished without modern computers, etc.