cloaks

[Ender]

I don't know how they'll have done it, but you have to remember one little tiny thing: It's Science Fiction, they'll have found at least some way around it, even if it's impossible in our own universe.

Do you even honestly realize what the fuck you are saying? Hey, dipshit, if there was no waste heat being produced by reactions there would be no stars or chemical reactions. Released energy would just flow freely without causing a change in the material it passed through. So no you can't fucking claim it doesn't apply.

[Cykeisme]

I don't know how they'll have done it, but you have to remember one little tiny thing: It's Science Fiction, they'll have found at least some way around it, even if it's impossible in our own universe.

I suppose it sounds like a I mean to be offensive, but I'm stating a fact: if you can say that, then you don't belong in any discussion on these forums.


Anyway, when cloak systems deal with energy emissions from a cloaked ship or planet, I kinda figured they used a similar method as they use for disspating energy absorbed by shields, transmitting it as neutrinos.

Of course, regardless of what form you use to shunt off energy, it should still be detectable with the right sensors. The neutrino emissions should be easily detectable when we're dealing with something the size of a planet (I'm assuming SW level tech can detect neutrinos without huge vats of chlorine ).

I wonder, though, how do cloaked ships mask their ion engines?

[Luzifer's right hand]

There are also gravametric (sp?) sensors in SW that could probably be used to easily detect cloacked planets.

And thermal imagers here on earth that could do the same thing. Thermodynamics make cloaks the single stupidest thing in scifi.

There are means to store waste heat(A water tank is the most simple example).
Most SF cloaks I know are not used indefinitely and you can get rid of the wast heat later.
In some universe with technobable means which the transfer energy into other dimensions(Culturverse "Trapdoor", Perry Rhodan "Paratron-Technology"), turn it into something more difficult to detect(Neutrionos for example).

[Cykeisme]

The idea of transferring energy into other 'dimensions' is a bit meh, if you ask me. Doesn't that violate the first law?
I suppose you could take it to mean that energy is conserved in the multi-verse, or whatever.. but I hardly know enough to know if that still makes sense.


In SW, however, storing energy in other dimensions makes a bit of sense, if energy can concevably be converted into hypermatter. I doubt it's possible to turn heat into hypermatter that easily, though, or else shield systems would do it, which makes hitting each others' ships with blaster weapons a pointless exercise.

[Ender]

There are also gravametric (sp?) sensors in SW that could probably be used to easily detect cloacked planets.

And thermal imagers here on earth that could do the same thing. Thermodynamics make cloaks the single stupidest thing in scifi.

There are means to store waste heat(A water tank is the most simple example).

Yes, so you pump the water around to cool things and store the heat. Except the pump itself and the fristion of the flowing water adds to the waste heat. hmmm. then you are still only shifting where the heat is, so once you hit a certain point of the capacity of the storage medium, you are back to radiating it away again....

[Ender]

In SW, however, storing energy in other dimensions makes a bit of sense, if energy can concevably be converted into hypermatter. I doubt it's possible to turn heat into hypermatter that easily, though, or else shield systems would do it, which makes hitting each others' ships with blaster weapons a pointless exercise.

what the hell are you smoking? How do you get tat they can shunt energy into other dimensions because they can harvest or produce tachyonic matter?

[Luzifer's right hand]

The idea of transferring energy into other 'dimensions' is a bit meh, if you ask me. Doesn't that violate the first law?
I suppose you could take it to mean that energy is conserved in the multi-verse, or whatever.. but I hardly know enough to know if that still makes sense.

It's certainly possible in the Rhodanverse and the Culture-verse.
That does not mean it's possible in the real world.

Yes, so you pump the water around to cool things and store the heat. Except the pump itself and the fristion of the flowing water adds to the waste heat. hmmm. then you are still only shifting where the heat is, so once you hit a certain point of the capacity of the storage medium, you are back to radiating it away again....

As I said you get rid of the waste heat later. Why did you ignore that part of my post?

[Ender]

Yes, so you pump the water around to cool things and store the heat. Except the pump itself and the fristion of the flowing water adds to the waste heat. hmmm. then you are still only shifting where the heat is, so once you hit a certain point of the capacity of the storage medium, you are back to radiating it away again....

As I said you get rid of the waste heat later. Why did you ignore that part of my post?

No, I laughed quite hard at it. You do realize that your idea automatically increases the natural radiation coming off your ship which would be detectable (second law again, you aren't going to get all of it even if you try and mask it) without dumping the heat almost immediately that your interior is rapidly going to be come uninhabitable, right? seriously, our 500 MW reactor kicks it up to almost 100F in about 45 minutes in the reactor room. That's with us being underwater and usiong pumops and such to cool things Thus we get conduction through the system and along the hull. You are already using radiation, which is far more inefficient, and now you wnat to remove that. It's gonna become a cooker in minutes.

[Luzifer's right hand]

No, I laughed quite hard at it. You do realize that your idea automatically increases the natural radiation coming off your ship which would be detectable (second law again, you aren't going to get all of it even if you try and mask it) without dumping the heat almost immediately that your interior is rapidly going to be come uninhabitable, right? seriously, our 500 MW reactor kicks it up to almost 100F in about 45 minutes in the reactor room. That's with us being underwater and usiong pumops and such to cool things Thus we get conduction through the system and along the hull. You are already using radiation, which is far more inefficient, and now you wnat to remove that. It's gonna become a cooker in minutes.

Complete stealth is of course impossible in real life, I can see that it's most likely wiser to radiate heat away as soon as possible for a theoretical spaceship and maybe it should try to keep the planets or the star of a system between you and your target as long as possible if you are trying to move with stealth.

Are we talking about the real world or SF were a technobable field is used for cloaking and you just need to prevent the waste heat from frying you?

We don't know the size of the tanks for the storage of waste heat(or other devices) used in most SF ships with the ability to cloak so it's impossible to say if it they will become a cooker in minutes.

In most of SF you have fast relativistic drives or even FTL-drives, which allow you to traverse systems in short time(hours and somtimes minutes or even seconds).
A stealth ship could have gaint tanks for the storage of waste heat which would buy it time for a surprise attack or reconnaissance.
After the attack or the reconnaissance mission the ship can start to radiate the wates heat away again.

In universes with tactical FTL you would only nee to cloak the emmisions which are detectable by FTL sensors(Not all universes have them anyway and in some they can only detect things like gravity) most of the time.
Who cares if they detect your heat when you already jumped to another point in space long ago when they detect it.

Planetary cloaks are of course incredible silly.

[FTeik]

Doesn't Ackbar describe the problems with cloaking-technology already in DarkForceRising? Especially the gravity and heat-part?

And if SW-ships can deal with the exess-heat of their 2E25 Watt-reactors or the incoming multi-gigaton turbolaser-fire they should be able to deal with the energy of a cloaking-device for some time, too.

Hmmm, how do shields interfere with the away-radiation?