This sounds very cool......

I hope you can relaise the thermal system as own mod.
i think its very cool as stand alone......

I have seen you use sort of a pump to dump the heat.
in space you would need sort of a disipation sail/fins (so opposite of solar) i would that would make space ships more interessting.
Plus you should add sort of a stirling-engine or point out if there is a fitting mod to use the heat instead of voiding it.

Thinking of it, if you manage to make sort of a heatexchanger which can be switched on/off you would even could direct the heat as energy source.

Optional depencys could be heat-using machines / inserters

Yes, the pump graphic is temporary; I chose the pump mainly because it makes it clear to the player that the radiators must be placed on the edge of their ship. I have an idea for a radiator-type look that I'll create at some point. Unfortunately, graphics are very difficult, and I only have basic Blender skills. So it may take some time before that is realised.

I'd like to have different sizes for the radiators, and ideally even different operating temperatures, with some radiators being able to support higher heats, but only being effective when at those high temperatures. So the player will have to think about the operating temperatures of their machines, and what kind of radiators will provide adequate cooling.

Heat exchangers and Stirling engines are also on the list of things that will come to the mod. Since I imagine later-game, for much larger platforms, you will reach the limits of how far heat pipes are effective. You would have to transfer heat to a coolant fluid, which is then transferred back to heat pipes at dedicated heat sink arrays, or used to boil water for electricity (at a less than 100% efficiency, such that you can't magic energy into existence). In any case, you will always need radiators to maintain a heat gradient. Since without one, you can't produce electricity.

The concept of releasing the system as its own mod is appealing; however, I'd like the thermal system to be polished before I even consider porting it to vanilla.

Since that task would be a lot of work, and I'd need adequate support for vanilla machines, have vanilla recipes for the required heat management parts. And I would have to define heat characteristics for every single vanilla machine. (The TFMG machines are very different to their vanilla equivalents. They consume a lot more power, such that their heat output is actually significant.)

I plan on eventually porting many of the new systems I add to TFMG to vanilla, such that any other mod can use them in the future, since I think it would be cool to see what others do with them.