Thermal management techniques include: transporting a refrigerant fluid from a receiver to an inlet of a flash tank that has a vapor-side outlet and liquid-side outlet such that a liquid phase of the refrigerant fluid moves to a bottom of the flash tank and outputs from the liquid-side outlet; forming a solid-vapor state from the liquid phase by expanding the liquid phase with an expansion valve to a first pressure that is less than a triple point pressure to form a solid-vapor mixture of the refrigerant fluid; extracting heat from a heat load with an evaporator that receives the solid-vapor mixture of the refrigerant fluid and sublimates the solid state of the solid-vapor mixture of the refrigerant fluid directly into a vapor phase of the refrigerant fluid; and discharging, from an exhaust line, the vapor phase to an ambient environment without returning the vapor phase to the receiver.