Magical Traveller starship heat sinks discovered?

[McPerth]

Even during peacetime, recon planes get shot down...

Officially, this never happens...though they have higher accident rates than other planes...

In any case, this is why I always advocated for reccon ships to jump into the iddle of nothing (between two orbits)

 

[mike wightman]

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.

So now you are talking about deliberately altering the orbits of comets so they are where you want when you want, or are you jumping a ship into the system to map the position and orbit of every comet and asteroid in the hope of finding some in the orbital position you want, moving in a way you want, at a time you want.

And if you are jumping a ship in to rendezvous with a comet or asteroid already in the inner system isn't that going to trigger the alarms?

 

[mike wightman]

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!

There are some very useful ideas here, I like it

 

[Darkwing]

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.

To a point. But when we know their recon birds are up, we put aircraft into hangars and seal them up, close up sub pens, etc. to deny them what information we can. The idea is to get some of that info without giving the other side a chance to know you're looking for it.

But, that requires you jumping into the inner system - which is what you're trying to avoid by using this approach.

There's a balance between how far in you need to go and how long you'll be on station.

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!

Always a chance, yes. That's a scenario better reserved for the PC's to drop on the sneaks - they'd be bored playing the spies arriving to ride the comet.

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)

I try to avoid planning on the basis of psionics - only the Zhodani are liable to have them as a developed, significant capability, and they're not the only state actor.

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) taht they are enemy scouts, without taht meaning you're on the eve of an attack.

Even in peacetime. But you will also button up anything you're trying to keep them from knowing about. Including an asteroid being used as a shipyard, say, for a secret project - although I'd accelerate it out of system to about a light year out or so as soon as it's built to specs.

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.

To a degree. If they have to know this is where you'll assemble, not too much. Just make sure they don't get to leave. If they're onto what you intended as a surprise -say that you slipped a force out from a planet they expected you to defend so you could flank them instead, and there was no reason for them to suspect anything would be in this system, then their appearance is a big problem for you.

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.

Long set up, sometimes slow to gather, but it all has it's place in building the mosaic. In the real world, our agencies use multiple methods and collate evrything to build the whole picture (or what we hope is the whole picture).

So now you are talking about deliberately altering the orbits of comets so they are where you want when you want, or are you jumping a ship into the system to map the position and orbit of every comet and asteroid in the hope of finding some in the orbital position you want, moving in a way you want, at a time you want.

Whichever is needful.

And if you are jumping a ship in to rendezvous with a comet or asteroid already in the inner system isn't that going to trigger the alarms?

You have to find the sweet spot where it's far enough out to avoid that, but close enough not to leave you stuck onboard too long. Guess wrong, and you have a provocation, with dead or captured agents - or worse, captured, turned, and returned with disinformation. Campaign possibilities, indeed.

 

[atpollard]

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!

... and the old prospector begins swearing up a storm at the Control Tower, its mother, its grandmother, and the various farm animals that fathered it ... while evading frantically and trying to use his mining laser for point defense.

Sorry, it was the first image that popped into my mind when I read that.

 

[mike wightman]

Whichever is needful.

Hmm, I suppose during peacetime you could be using your legitimate merchants to map target systems, you could probably get a lot of orbital data for free from a library data terminal at the system starport, or you could have to resort to espionage to gain the orbital data you need.

All good adventure hooks.

You have to find the sweet spot where it's far enough out to avoid that, but close enough not to leave you stuck onboard too long. Guess wrong, and you have a provocation, with dead or captured agents - or worse, captured, turned, and returned with disinformation. Campaign possibilities, indeed.

There's always fast drug to cut the couple of months of drift time down to only a day of subjective time - your ninjas could take it and rely on their suit computers to inject the antidote.

 

[Darkwing]

Hmm, I suppose during peacetime you could be using your legitimate merchants to map target systems, you could probably get a lot of orbital data for free from a library data terminal at the system starport, or you could have to resort to espionage to gain the orbital data you need.

All good adventure hooks.

Exactly why the captain of the ship was set up as a legit merchant in the first place. That, and social spying.

There's always fast drug to cut the couple of months of drift time down to only a day of subjective time - your ninjas could take it and rely on their suit computers to inject the antidote.

True, I don't tend to include the magical drugs, so didn't think about it. That would help.

 

[Greylond]

Hmmm.... looking at this list of 27 Science Fictions that became Science Facts in 2012, #5 seems interesting.
http://myscienceacademy.org/2013/01/03/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2012/

Apparently at our TL it is possible to bend light, even Infrared, so that a protected object is invisible. So, maybe at higher TLs "Invisibility in Space" is possible?!

 

[HG_B]

Apparently at our TL it is possible to bend light, even Infrared, so that a protected object is invisible. So, maybe at higher TLs "Invisibility in Space" is possible?!

Bending is easy. However, it doesn't get rid of the heat. So, no help there.

 

[HG_B]

Officially, this never happens...though they have higher accident rates than other planes...

Gary Power...

 

[aramis]

Bending is easy. However, it doesn't get rid of the heat. So, no help there.

more clearly: However, it doesn't get rid of the heat, and thus doesn't get rid of the blackbody radiation. So, no help there.

 

[Greylond]

Bending is easy. However, it doesn't get rid of the heat. So, no help there.

The technology described in the article says that it prevents detection from Thermal/Infrared sensors, so yes, if it could be developed it would help.

 

[Darkwing]

The technology described in the article says that it prevents detection from Thermal/Infrared sensors, so yes, if it could be developed it would help.

But unless you have good heat sinks, that heat cooks you. How long can the heat sinks keep you cool enough before they overwhelm and show through the thermal screen? That's the question.

 

[Greylond]

Phil Eklund designed a board game called High Frontier. It is a game of exploring/exploiting our Solar System. The game uses current science of the solar system and either current or future designs already on the drawing table. Eklund is a 20+ year veteran with NASA. Some of the rocket components in the game include heat radiators for use in deep space for just such a reason. One of the interesting things about the game is that the rules include description/essays on the technology used in the game. The actual rules document is about 50% "Fluff" which is the essay/discussion of the tech. So, the designs for heat radiators exist already.

The "Invisibility" cloak in that other article is described as not needing to do anything about any heat, just disguise your heat signature. So, I guess the limitation would be how much heat can be hidden/cloaked.

 

[aramis]

The "Invisibility" cloak in that other article is described as not needing to do anything about any heat, just disguise your heat signature. So, I guess the limitation would be how much heat can be hidden/cloaked.

said cloak will still give off its own blackbody radiation.

The primary reason that the IR space telescopes are supercooled is so that the blackbody radiation signal from the mirror is reduced below that of the target.

As I'm certain some here already know, it's possible to sort a weak signal out from a much higher magnitude steady noise, provided that your sensitivity is correctly set. It's much easier to reduce or remove the noise source, but for extreme IR (under 50°K or so), doing so is not a practical factor except by cooling the scope. And that's a very limited technique... boiling liquid Helium.

 

[Greylond]

But for space traffic control applications the question is how long to resolve a weak target like that at long range. Our current technology that can do that has the luxury of the targets either being static(from our point of view) or on an easily predicted path so that they can spend hours collecting the thermal radiation detected until they have enough data to resolve an image. If your sensor takes several hours(or longer) to resolve a target then if it moves in an unexpected direction you are going to have a hard time detecting it. Think about how useless a RADAR would be if it took more than a few seconds to resolve a moving target.

 

[rancke]

But for space traffic control applications the question is how long to resolve a weak target like that at long range. Our current technology that can do that has the luxury of the targets either being static(from our point of view) or on an easily predicted path so that they can spend hours collecting the thermal radiation detected until they have enough data to resolve an image. If your sensor takes several hours(or longer) to resolve a target then if it moves in an unexpected direction you are going to have a hard time detecting it. Think about how useless a RADAR would be if it took more than a few seconds to resolve a moving target.

And here we touch on the likely improvement in sensor technology from TL7 to TL15. Unlike heat radiation, which has no room for improvement (always excepting some "magical" heat sink), sensor technology can improve in gathering and in signal analysis and in computer power.


Hans

 

[Greylond]

I understand that, but we can also have tech advances in masking technology to defeat the sensor.

Just like the link I posted. A company is currently developing technology to defeat visible and infrared detection.

 

[rancke]

I understand that, but we can also have tech advances in masking technology to defeat the sensor.

Just like the link I posted. A company is currently developing technology to defeat visible and infrared detection.

As Wil already pointed out (in one of the posts you recently responded to), the technology does not defeat your own heat emissions. Which is the problem an object in space has to overcome.

You can have companies investigate how to fly to the moon under human power alone; that doesn't mean it is actually possible.


Hans

 

[Greylond]

As Wil already pointed out (in one of the posts you recently responded to), the technology does not defeat your own heat emissions. Which is the problem an object in space has to overcome.

Actually yes it does. It doesn't get rid of the heat, but it makes it difficult to detect those emissions.