Cloaking

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
IIRC Chamelian suits use a special cryogenic cold can to kill IR signiture. A heat dump that could handle the megawatts from a starship power plant is mind boggling. Something that could, for minutes or hours, handle the kilowatts from a ship powered down in stealth mode is conceivable.

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My thoughts exactly, yet we have engineered stealth technology for radars reducing signatuire on the stealth bomber/ FTRs of today.

The best cloak (sans Black Globe) in traveller seems to be a matter of tactics, and Electro magnetic masking, as well as being "powered down".
Likewise, in such a position, the Skipper ought to be keeping their peepers out using passive sensors, as opposing forces will detect the use of hot/ active sensors. (or are more likely to!)
Space is very cold in places(Hotter say the bright side of a moon) Where you hide is equally important as well (a narrow canyon on a planet/ moon or planetoid is ideal, since scans "sweep" over, unless they are motionless "directly overhead" (relative as to what is up/ down in space, like a trojan point debris cluster. or asteroid/ planetoid belt, etc etal.
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(OK, it ain't that simple. Active senors can get edge effects, scatter, off the mirror. But if the bad guys ain't looking for it, they can miss it.)

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True, if THEY KNOW what they're lookin for!
If not, well, ye skate by, and live another day...

 

[Andrew]

The description of a stealth ship prepared for my local traveller campaign

Stealth Systems
Tukera Lines has refitted this ship with their new Control Emissions of Electromagnetic Gravitic and Variable Absorption and Radiation System (CEEGVARS). They are hoping to sell this system to the Imperial navy and want it deployed as a test bed for someone who will see service. The System is designed to reduce emissions in several areas. It deals with the ships heat signature for a limited time by building in a thermal Dump in the core of the ship this enables the reactor and other systems to be cooled without radiating heat. Obviously this can only be kept up for a limited time until the ship must dump heat , the length depends on which other systems are active. One of the developments of this system is linking to ships Active emissions stealth hull coating to the heat dumps allowing the ship to absorb or radiate energy from the hull in a pattern matching background radiation emissions. This system is far more effective when there is only one or 2 ships within close sensor range as if they are able to compare their sensor profiles they will start to notice discrepancies between their viewpoints. The Hull coating is also able to absorb most outgoing RF Frequency emissions as electrical energy reducing the ships detection profile in this area.
There is also a development in thruster techniques this allows the ship to monitor the zero-point emissions and gravity variations around the ship and match the thruster emissions to it this allows a low order acceleration of the order of 0.0001G to be maintained while still maintaining a very stealthy profile.
The problems with this system are it consumes a fairly large amount of space found on the Krasny Oktobre because it was built to TL-12 standards and then refitted with TL-15 Systems which shrank the internal systems and it’s need for a very sophisticated computer system which requires constant monitoring. It also needs an smooth hull surface which has required that the Ships weapon turrets be built as pop up Jack turrets , again consuming internal volume.