Stealth in space

[Isard]

Split to new thread - HNM

As for that common misconceptions listed there, I want to point a few things out...



Space Is Three Dimensional

Never seen this done wrong. I've seen ships pulling 3D maneuvers in just about every sci-fi ever...

Rockets Are Not Boats

That's assuming you don't control gravity... Now most Sci-fi series happen so far into the future that gravity has been simulated without moving parts, so...



"Rockets Are Not Fighter Planes"

If you read the novels, they go into great detail on the wonderful maneuvers fighters can preform without atmosphere hampering them, and maneuvers that require atmosphere are absent.


Rockets Are Not Arrows

Again, its been done. Xwing's just love hitting that Z axis to flip around. Problem is, 90% of the time the squint on your tail will light you up if you stop juking around long enough to pull it off...

"Rockets Don't Got Windows"
Transparisteel and Transparent aluminum for Star Wars and Star trek respectively. All the structural integrity, plus see through.

"There Ain't No Stealth In Space"

Minimize heat emissions, paint the sucker black. Halo got their prowler vessels stealth-ed. Without additional tech. They're not invisible, they're just hard to see.

There Is No Sound In Space

In EVE, capsules simulate sound for us. We know its not the real sound, but it's to keep us focused.

Anytime those rules are broken, its for the benefit of the audience. But in the canon, most rules of space are followed.


Put guns on big ships, throw them at each other.

[neytirifanboy]

Originally Posted by ISV Venture Star

Space battles in the sense that most people conceive them are a ridiculous concept. The same guy that wrote this great piece praising the design of the ISV Venture Star:

Atomic Rocket: Realistic Designs

...also wrote this article that describes just why most space battles seen in movies are ridiculous:

Atomic Rocket: Common Misconceptions

Nice links. Very interesting.

I love space battles. Even the improbable ones (especially B5). But I don't think they are approriate for Avatar.

I want to see more battles on the ground. I think there is great scope to continue the technology vs. biology theme. We got a taste but it would be nice to see more.

I would like to see the enemy (who ever they may be) attacking with technology and the Na'vi using ingenious ways to take them down using their natural strength and skill. I would also like to see the Na'vi start to use their environment to their advantage in battles; i.e. moving around the canopy of the forest and using stealth.

Naturally, i want more Neytiri. But in a way that reinforces her best characteristsics, expands her personality, while remaining true to what she is.

I want to see her laugh and cry and show her passion. But don't make the love story too soppy.

But there is one thing I don't want.

NO IRRITATING HERO CHILDREN PLEASE.

[ISV Venture Star]

Originally Posted by Aihwa

"There Ain't No Stealth In Space"

Minimize heat emissions, paint the sucker black.
[

No can do. It's still going to radiate at some wavelength, sorry.

http://granades.com/wordpress/wp-con...lthinSpace.pdf

[Isard]

Originally Posted by ISV Venture Star

No can do. It's still going to radiate at some wavelength, sorry.

http://granades.com/wordpress/wp-con...lthinSpace.pdf

If you read in depth, halo ships minimize all electrical, radiological, and light escaping from their vessel. They lock down every single possible source of detection. The easiest way to spot a prowler, is literally to look for a black space in the shape of the vessel. Trust me, Halo stealth works. It's the same principals of submarines running silent, they can do it, but not for long and not at full effectiveness. They're not invisible, but they're damned hard to find...


((not to mention that space is a pretty damn big place, odds of finding them are small))

[ISV Venture Star]

Originally Posted by Aihwa

If you read in depth, halo ships minimize all electrical, radiological, and light escaping from their vessel. They lock down every single possible source of detection.

And how do they do that?

[Isard]

Originally Posted by ISV Venture Star

And how do they do that?

Ablative coating, baffles on their engines (which run at less than 5% of their normal capacity when running silent) All non-essential systems are shut down. They can stay silent for weeks. They're also designed to confuse any active scanners (such as radar systems) kind of like modern stealth aircraft. The only way to actively detect them would be with some kind of gravametric device. (no way to disguise mass) They're also tiny. We're talking a crew of 20 MAX. Small ship, almost no emissions, absolutely nothing reflecting or emitting any light along the entire spectrum, no radiological emissions.

I read that article, you cant run a fully operational ship stealth-ed, but you can hide a minimally active ship.

[ISV Venture Star]

Originally Posted by Aihwa

They're also tiny. We're talking a crew of 20 MAX. Small ship, almost no emissions, absolutely nothing reflecting or emitting any light along the entire spectrum, no radiological emissions.

I read that article, you cant run a fully operational ship stealth-ed, but you can hide a minimally active ship.

Still can't work, sorry. What do they do with the heat from the 20 crew-members?

Even with most of the systems powered down, heat would still find its way to the outside of the hull. If you tried refrigerating the hull, the refrigeration systems themselves would just produce more heat, necessitating more elaborate heat-reduction methods which would in turn only produce more heat. They'd need a massive heat sink to dump it in, and even then it would only work a short while, certainly not days.


You can't have stealth in space, you can't have stealth in space...

There Ain’t No Stealth in Space..

[Isard]

Originally Posted by ISV Venture Star

Still can't work, sorry. What do they do with the heat from the 20 crew-members?

Even with most of the systems powered down, heat would still find its way to the outside of the hull. If you tried refrigerating the hull, the refrigeration systems themselves would just produce more heat, necessitating more elaborate heat-reduction methods which would in turn only produce more heat. They'd need a massive heat sink to dump it in, and even then it would only work a short while, certainly not days.


You can't have stealth in space, you can't have stealth in space...

There Ain’t No Stealth in Space..

If you can contain the heat, its possible. Its the future. The concept works.


((Remember, they said "There aint no plane faster than sound" "There aint no way the world is round" so on and so forth... Just because tech doesn't exist now makes things unfeasible?))

[ISV Venture Star]

Originally Posted by Aihwa

If you can contain the heat, its possible. Its the future. The concept works.

If you can find a magical material that can do that, sure, you can do what you like!

Stealth in Space, pt. 2 : Built on Facts

[Isard]

And here's how they do it.

A Prowler corvette, when operating properly, can fly right under the noses of any covenant warship undetected. This extreme stealth comes at the price of good acceleration, however. While it's maximum thrust puts it at about 5 g's of acceleration, the fastest it can go and still maintain stealth is about 25% that figure. This is due to its unique dual systems of "hot" thrust and "cold" thrust. While hot thrust is the same as any other starship drive, i.e. very detectable, the cold thrust system accelerates impulse propellant to high speeds without high temperatures, making a prowler's exhaust virtually undetectable. Cold thrust has very poor exhaust velocity, but this is considered a worthwhile tradeoff.

This stealth corvette is very angular in shape, in order to deflect radar signatures, and the outer hull is cooled to about 16 degrees kelvin or less, to prevent thermal radiation. There is also a carefully maintained layer of black surfacing, that absorbs almost all incoming radiation.

For centuries, remaining stealthy in space was considered impossible. Though radar deflection, ECM, surface cooling, and cold thrust were very real possibilities, thermodynamics always dictated that a ship had to rid itself of highly detectable heat somehow, as containing all of it would prove disastrous within minutes. But, in the year 2494, the advent of the slipspace heat-sink changed the course of warfare for the UNSC.

By this time, the effects of an unguided slipspace transition were well-known. Any ship that underwent an unguided or underpowered transition invariably wound up as a vaporized mass. This eventually proved useful as the premise of a slipspace heat sink. Every Prowler has a secondary slipspace generator in its hull. This smaller generator creates a metastable slipspace rift inside a containment chamber within the ship. Excess heat drawn from the outer hull is pulled into standard heat sinks. Water is then run over them to draw the heat away, raising its temperature to thousands of degrees. It is then directed into the rift chamber and hurled into slipspace, where it drifts for about 3 to 5 seconds before falling back into normal space. At this point, it is dispersed so far in every direction that the heat energy is completely unnoticable.

This means that a prowler's effective period of stealth is dictated by how much water it carries. Generally, one carries about 3000 metric tons, and the longevity this allows depends on one's proximity to a heat source, such as a star. As a rule, a prowler in geosynchronous orbit around Earth could stay totally dark for about five days at a time. A prowler orbiting Mercury could stay dark for a little over a day. A commander who's feeling desperate could buy himself a few more hours by ejecting the heat sinks into the rift one at a time. There are, however, varying degrees of "darkness". "Totally dark" means a covenant ship coudn't find you from ten kilometers away, while "mostly dark" means it's undetectable from a few hundred kilometers.

While being a massively useful intelligence tool, the Prowler-class corvette in essentially helpless in a fight, not being a match for anything larger than a pelican. It is lightly armored, very underpowered, and armed only with 2 small point defense turrets. It's bulky systems leave little room for passengers, but stealth insertion teams sometimes use these as transportation.

A cooling layer beneath the hull, that then transfers heat to water, then hurls the superheated water into "slipspace" (scifi tech), where it stays for a few seconds, then reappears in normal space, spread out over a massive area in undetectable amounts. It can only do this for a period of time however, depending on how far to the local solar body it was.

So, it is not magic, just tech we do not posses. Assuming slip-space technology were viable, it would work.

[ISV Venture Star]

Originally Posted by Aihwa

So, it is not magic, just tech we do not posses. Assuming slip-space technology were viable, it would work.

Assuming this magical way of travelling faster than light were viable, it would work. Fine.

Slipstream (science fiction) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Slipspace is a domain with alternate physical laws, allowing faster-than-light travel without relativistic side-effects

That's nice. Good for them.

[Isard]

Originally Posted by ISV Venture Star

Assuming this magical way of travelling faster than light were viable, it would work. Fine.

Slipstream (science fiction) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




That's nice. Good for them.

Its theoretically possible. All that dimensional mishmash. It's far more plausible than say Star Trek's warp drives which simply accelerate a vessel to faster than light speeds with apparently no side effects.

[ISV Venture Star]

Humanity being able to access a special domain with different laws of physics? Maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it. Just sayin'

What I like about the ISV Venture Star is that it doesn't require new physics or anything like that. It just needs a hell of a lot of energy. That's pretty much the main flaw.

[Isard]

Originally Posted by ISV Venture Star

Humanity being able to access a special domain with different laws of physics? Maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it. Just sayin'

What I like about the ISV Venture Star is that it doesn't require new physics or anything like that. It just needs a hell of a lot of energy. That's pretty much the main flaw.

Avatar's technology will be viable within a few decades. It's not really that far into the future. Most sci-fi (Halo included) are hundreds of years into our future. If you look at the rate we've developed technology, by the time these era's have come about, we'll be capable of so much more. Tbh, Avatar is just barely into the "science" part of scifi, and soon will probably just be considered fiction. (as we'll be capable of interstellar travel within a reasonable amount of time)

[ISV Venture Star]

Let's agree to disagree. Personally, I think that there will be no crewed intersteller travel in this century. I'd love to be wrong.