mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
You can doubt it as much as you like but it is still a fact, and it still takes years for a comet to get from the outer system to the inner system - basic astrophysics.
Magical Traveller starship heat sinks discovered?
- Thread starter navanod
- Start date
You can doubt it as much as you like but it is still a fact, and it still takes years for a comet to get from the outer system to the inner system - basic astrophysics.
Much simpler than that. Have a scout (with enough fuel for a second jump) jump into the system a good way out. Just as you can't sneak up on anyone in space, you can't conceal movement from anyone looking on. The defenders will know that the scouts are out there, but they will be much too far away from it to do anything about it. So the scout (better yet, pair of scouts) can watch and then jump back and report.
Hans
Sure, but while the defender knows that there are watchers Out There, they don't know who they are. And if I was a defender, I'd assume that information was leaving the system anyway. On a passing Free Trader, perhaps.
Hans
Sure, but while the defender knows that there are watchers Out There, they don't know who they are. And if I was a defender, I'd assume that information was leaving the system anyway. On a passing Free Trader, perhaps.
Hans
Good point.
As an attacker I still wouldn't want the defenders to have confirmation or even a suspicion that an attack was about to happen.
Why do people who post like they understand basic physics keep getting the fundamentals wrong?
There is no degree kelvin, the unit of measurement is the kelvin (K).
It's NOT FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG. It's an older use. Scientists have changed the use of the term in the last 30 years, but °K is perfectly acceptable, albeit not current, use.
DO NOT NITPICK OVER X°K vs XK - IT WILL GET YOU INFRACTED, BECAUSE IT'S RUDE AND WRONG.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
Exactly.
Sounds like a ST: Voyager episode......
The other advantage is that the scout can jump in, gather the information from X hours/days ago, then jump out. The defenders won't know for hours, at least.
You set it up well in advance, but you put observers on it when you need them. Retirement won't be an issue. The orbital period doesn't matter, since you're setting them up - have several. One will be in range in a reasonable time frame.
No, I doubt I would have to ride the thing that long. The period in the inner system is a lot shorter, months or less, depending on the particular orbit. since you're making your own, you can set up the orbit you want. It just needs to be a reasonably short interval between when you rendezvous and come aboard to when you're able to leave the thing. Since it's a comet, and they do heat up, we can get away with a longer habitable period, so deployments would be feasible.
What you assumed is not what I meant and your fact is irrelevant, except for planning purposes. If someone set this up, they'd have a chain of them, so that those years don't matter. These stations might not even be manned at all for years at a time.
Yeah, that's non-starter for sure.
Sounds like a failure of your imagination.
The long view.
Someone earlier made a crack about the Zho needing something 35 years to set a peek at a target system using an asteroid or comet. I would like to point out that unlike Imperials the Zhodani tend to take a much longer view of things, so honestly I wouldn't be at all surprised that they might take on a task that will only bear fruit in the long term.
Someone earlier made a crack about the Zho needing something 35 years to set a peek at a target system using an asteroid or comet. I would like to point out that unlike Imperials the Zhodani tend to take a much longer view of things, so honestly I wouldn't be at all surprised that they might take on a task that will only bear fruit in the long term.
Sure. It just depends on what data you want. But it would be easier to send in a commercial trader in whenever you need data. Even 35 years hence.
Hi,
That may not be a big deal. Or, think of it this way, during the cold war we knew that the Soviets were spying on us and we knew that they knew we were spying on them. Each side probably tried to play games on each other to some extent, but in the end we had to accept that what we couldn't hide from their satellites and such or try to confuse them about, they would probably eventually see/figure out.
In the end, in Traveller then, I wouldn't at all be surprised if both the Zhodani and the Imperials would use a wide array of ways to spy on each other and the fact that each side may have known of some of the spying attempts may not have been that big of a deal.
True but the difference is that when their fleets were on the move, we knew about it. To compare it to Traveller the USA would have had to have been nervous that a Soviet Fleet would suddenly appear without warning 300 miles off the coast of Norfolk and heading in with everything they had. Base/Port Defense takes on a whole different character when you have near real time tracking of all of the enemy's major fleets...
that's why I said 250 MW or none from my readings of the various CT publications, you can only be on or off, not throttled back, if you could throttle back then you would not need that 10 tons a month in power plant fuel due to waiting in station for a good quarter of the month, perhaps it's only 7 1/2 but that's a side track to the discussion of methods of hiding the signature of a space ship of which the OP was asking about.
So we have: planetoid craft thermal inertia...
lasers to cool the exteriour to micro kelvin,
envelopes to convert the blackbody spectrum to one similuar to that of an asteroid,
active ECM and jammers,
Stealth coatings,
riding on natural bodies that are heading in system anyway,
not keeping your ship at shirtsleeve temps, pumping down the atmo and living in vacc suits with the ship mostly powered down (lots of spare consumables and batteries for the suits)
white globe,
black globe,
misdirection/slight of hand,
hide in plain sight as a legit merchant.
Every one of these has a drawback or several.
Thermal inertia cannot be maintained for much longer than a few days once you start using maneuver or other heavy power hungry systems
The lasers that maintain the micro kelvin themselves can be seen, although the power levels are low.
Envelopes do not replicate the effects of variance in albedo as a natural body would exhibit as it rotates, and so could be filtered out from the natural bodies.
White globes have only the blackbody radiation, there is no reflected light and it occludes more distant objects.
Black globes occludes more distant sourses and have a limited "on" state endurance till the energy storage systems are full.
Stealth coatings only work to reduce reflected energy or direct it away from the sesnor and may not be all aspect and do little against the blackbody radiation of the ship itself
Active ECM systems can be beaten by better ECCM measures or carefull analysis.
Jammers alert the oppsition that there is something hostile in that direction.
Riding natural bodies too slow for adventure types, though governments may indeed use these bodies.
Old fashoned sneaking (no atmo, live in vacc suits while coasting in with power off) takes a long time is difficult to pull off as you get closer to the sensors eventually you will be at ranges where they can resolve your visual image and know you for what you are.
Misdirection slight of hand requires multiple actors working in concert in hopes to present the defender with red herrings to chase while the actual intruder stealths in. depends on the defender re tasking sensors away from the intended intrusion course.
Hiding in plain sight, well that customs cutter backed by a brace of SBD's wants to board you, you can't run, you can't jump, sitting duck time.
Everything has a chance, some better than others and it's all highly dependant of the defender's capabilities.
Your scout arrives near the comet in the outer system and suddenly the sensors on the comet go active and you have inbound missiles and laser strikes on your hull!
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
But, that requires you jumping into the inner system - which is what you're trying to avoid by using this approach.
Unless the ship is stationary (relative to the highport), at the same orbit and with the same orbital angle, the limitations of the psionic teleport (conservation of energy and momentum) will preclude that, even if clairvoyants and telepaths are used to give the comandos the mental image they need. SO I only envision this option as doable just before docking, or when docked to the highport (even so, they would bypass custoums, and that might be enough)
That's (IMHO) like saying that when in war you see a reccon plane that means you'll be under attack soon. AFAIK, when at war, reccon planes are flying as much as possible, even if no intent to attack, just to gather intelligence.
I guess the same will be true in Traveller with the scouts. If you're in a frontline System (or one near the frontline), you can expect to see ships jumping in and out as stelthy as they can (or at least avoiding any encounter) on a relatively continuous basis, and suspecting (if not outright knowing) that they are enemy scouts, without that meaning you're on the eve of an attack.
Scouts will aslo be sent to locate enemy fleet concentrations for defensive pourposes (to detect enemy axis of advance).
So, I guess the fact of your scouts being detected will have few to do with your possibilities to achieve surprise. In that, enemy scouts appearing in the system where your pleet is assembling should (again IMHO) concern you more than the fact that your scouts are detected in enemy'ssystem.
And I'm sure there are those projects, but those are far reaching plans, while most of what is being said here is more about military immediate intelligence, and the projects you quote here will be far too slow for that.
But in cold war the information those spies (or any intelligence gathering system) gathered was immediately (or near so) available to the HQ, while in Traveller you know your intelligence is, in the best case, a week old.
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During war, recon planes are priority targets. One of the reasons for maintaining air superiority is so that the enemy recon planes never get close to anything important, and if they do, never get to report it.
Even during peacetime, recon planes get shot down...
Even during peacetime, recon planes get shot down...
