On Feb 23, 4:59 pm, "dwight.thi...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"
<dwight.thi...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Feb 23, 3:42 pm, Luke Campbell <lwc...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > Now the bit about keeping the radiators edge on to your observer is
> > clever, but as others have noted it is not particularly effective
> > assuming a civilization with an extensive presence in space. And if
> > they don't have an extensive presence in space while you are capable
> > of moving asteroids, you probably out-class them so badly that there
> > is no need to be stealthy.
> I imagine this is a game where people try to keep tabs on everyone
> else's sensors. They themselves radiate, after all, more-so if they
> have maneuvering capability. If not, keep track of the ships that
> might place them in strategic orbits.
Knowing where the sensors are doesn't automatically give you
the magical ability to have them conveniently all lined up in a
plane so you can "hide" a radiator edge on with all of them
simultaneously.
You can design a radiator to radiate into a cone a bit narrower
than an entire hemisphere, but it is HARD to get a radiator to
radiate into a small cone. The basic design would be a large
actively cooled polished parabolic mirror reflecting light from
a small hot blackbody radiator. Unfortunately, some light
will be absorbed by the mirror, which is why it must be actively
cooled. You're going to be consuming a lot of energy pumping
heat from this large 3K mirror into the small hot radiator.
And that energy consumed adds to the waste heat generated.
> Also, no matter how far-flung
> your net is, it can easily be foiled by maneuvering outside the convex
> hull formed by the individual units.
This depends on how patient you are. It could take decades to
get outside the network if you use a highly visible drive to get
outside the net quickly (and thus it's something suspicious to
the enemy). Or if you lob the thing slowly with something like
a planetary mass driver, it could take centuries to get outside
the network.
This assumes it's even possible to get outside the sensor
net at all. The easiest way to launch the sensor drones is
to just send them out with just enough fuel to accelerate
outward. No deceleration burn when reaching a particular
desired radius from the Sun. Thus, the sensor network just
continuously gets bigger and bigger. Instead of wasting
resources on deceleration burns, you simply periodically
launch more sensor drones to "replace" the ones that get
too far out to be particularly useful.
Essentially, the older less sophisticated sensor drones
naturally retire themselves by cruising off into interstellar
space. As an incidental side benefit, they can scan around
interstellar space, which may be interesting on a scientific
level even if there's no significant military threat out there.
The Oort cloud is huge and retired sensor drones could
usefully do good science with a flyby. There may even
be huge Earth sized ice worlds out there in interstellar
space:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7249884.stm
Isaac Kuo
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