On Feb 23, 7:41 pm, IsaacKuo <mech...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 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.
What is this HARD you speak of? Some numbers, please? In fact, an
arrangement that covers 1% of the sky or less should be assumed to be
doable. Assume the mirror is 99.99% reflective. You seem to want to
imply that in doing this calculation the sums converge slowly, but I
don't see you showing your reasoning as to why this is so.
> > 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.
Again, you're assuming stuff without using any numbers. But so what?
Why shouldn't these sorts of manuveurings take decades?
> 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.
But, uh, if you're doing that, aren't you kinda showing where those
sensors are? The rules are most definitely, 'assume sensors can
always be perfectly stealthed and never found, while spaceships have
to obey the laws of physics.'
> 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
Perhaps. But it doesn't detract from the fact that the paradigm is
that stealth is an active campaign, for _all_ components. Assuming
otherwise, or assuming more passivity is simply not realistic.
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