How to Dectect Cloaked Ships

[Mr Bean]

Actually you can go far colder than 2.7 K , you just need to use better heat exchange systems (like say magnetic cooling). But that is irrelevant.

Far Colder? When Absoulte Zero B 0K 2.7 is quite close don't you think?

No 2.7k is the Minium Heat of Space, IE if one where a million light years between galaxys

[tharkûn]

Bean: illioniths of a degree K is far colder. Matter starts to behave *really* screwy down at those temperatures. .1K -> .00001K is considered far colder (at least that's how it was explained to me).

Some of my coworkers run at 2.5 K on a daily basis. They tell me thats "fairly warm" on that scale things.

In any event, my apologies I misread you. No arguements about 2.7 K.


Basically yes I agree heat emissions are a problem for a cloaked ship (that can see at least), but you can incorporate a large heat sink to soak up your waste heat to circumvent that.

[Master of Ossus]

Bean: illioniths of a degree K is far colder. Matter starts to behave *really* screwy down at those temperatures. .1K -> .00001K is considered far colder (at least that's how it was explained to me).

Some of my coworkers run at 2.5 K on a daily basis. They tell me thats "fairly warm" on that scale things.

In any event, my apologies I misread you. No arguements about 2.7 K.


Basically yes I agree heat emissions are a problem for a cloaked ship (that can see at least), but you can incorporate a large heat sink to soak up your waste heat to circumvent that.

At these temperatures, tiny particles begin to move INCREDIBLY slowly. It is virtually impossible to cool things beyond about .00001 K, although there is no theoretical limit to how cold Cesium or Francium can be made using forcefields.

[tharkûn]

Evaporative cooling works below that limit, I thought that worked with just about everything (just not as well on some things as others).

[Master of Ossus]

Evaporative cooling works below that limit, I thought that worked with just about everything (just not as well on some things as others).

In theory, evaporative cooling can operate at any temperature on any substance. In practice, only a few elements are practical due to limitations with our ability to manipulate the necessary fields.

[Failed Glory]

[Observer


Big long trail, Its SPREADS OUT, in Space it does in 3D in a pretty big cloud, Depending on the Sensativity of the Insturments one could follow a ship from Thousands of KMs away thanks to Heat-Trace

What is this EM radiation supposed to impact against to create a wake? Now assuming it is a trail, there is nothing in space to impact against to create such a omnidirectional "wake". It would be unidirectional, as in not visible from other points of view like a regular wake in the sea, except directly behind. You can't detect the photons of sunlight going to to Jupiter unless you are directly in that path.

Now, a logical principle; if this was so simple a way to trace a cloaked vessel, don't you think 24th century Romulan cloak designers would realize what a very early 21st century sci-fi fan does?

[Darth Servo]

Now, a logical principle; if this was so simple a way to trace a cloaked vessel, don't you think 24th century Romulan cloak designers would realize what a very early 21st century sci-fi fan does?

The Romulans can't even figure out that you need a lot more than 2000 troops to conquor a planet.

[tharkûn]

The Romulans can't even figure out that you need a lot more than 2000 troops to conquor a planet.
Or they might be smart enough to realize that 2k troops can seize control of key planetary defenses that would allow more troops to land. Given ST's apparent lack of mobile Anti-Orbital ground weapons and strong planetary sheilds ... he who controls orbit will eventually take the planet (notice we have NEVER seen a campaign winning on the ground when the other guys have ships in orbit ... there is a reason). All the Romulans have to do to conqueor Vulcan is to hold the orbital defenses long enough to be reinforced.

[Master of Ossus]

The Romulans can't even figure out that you need a lot more than 2000 troops to conquor a planet.
Or they might be smart enough to realize that 2k troops can seize control of key planetary defenses that would allow more troops to land. Given ST's apparent lack of mobile Anti-Orbital ground weapons and strong planetary sheilds ... he who controls orbit will eventually take the planet (notice we have NEVER seen a campaign winning on the ground when the other guys have ships in orbit ... there is a reason). All the Romulans have to do to conqueor Vulcan is to hold the orbital defenses long enough to be reinforced.

And you can do that with 2000 troops? The Federation can't muster enough forces to overwhelm that? And where are the planetary security forces? The police should be able to storm a compound like that, if it can be seized so easily by so few, not to mention the national guard or any other military forces there (assuming that they do, indeed exist). In addition, part of the reason why so many campaigns are successful with ships in orbit is that the ships in orbit indicate that the attacking side has brought with it enough forces to take the planet in the first place. In fact, it would actually be surprising if, given such conditions, the side with ships in orbit lost even if the ships could do nothing but drop troops off on the ground.

Also, Bajoran terrorists did beat the Cardassians despite the presence of Cardassian ships and stations around Bajor. The Dominion also failed in their objective to secure the Founder before his death in "The Ship," but that was a HIGHLY limited campaign, to say the least.

[tharkûn]

And you can do that with 2000 troops? The Federation can't muster enough forces to overwhelm that?
Was there or was there not a Romulan warbird right alongside the Vulcan ship? Could it possibly, just possibly have held more troops, WMD's, or something else that when Vulcan's planetary defenses go down would allow to seize control with ease?

Hell if the Romulans have enough ships cloaked and ready to make a run to Vulcan, the assualt force need only blow the defenses so the Warbirds can make it to Vulcan and set down real occupation forces. Remember a group of feddie cadets brought down the entire frikking power grid on earth. I see no reason why a few thousand Romulans with advantage of surprise couldn't acheive at least something similar.

In any event, dislodging 2000 troops is not a steam roll. Having police (with the exception of SWAT) storming that many troops in defensive positions ... well that is called suicide. Can you name a single event were police ever stormed more than 100 soldiers and won in anything less than hours (like say how long it takes for Picard to run from the Neutral zone to Earth in STI)? When the feddies wanted WACO it took forever to set up. Likewise when the Russians stormed the Chechyans recently. Its going to take time (and bodies) to even figure out what the hell is going on, let alone to plan a complicated raid

If its a properly equiped spec ops force (something not yet seen in ST) ... you ain't getting them out without calling in heavy weapons.

[falconbv]

a cannon way to detect cloaked vessels is the tachyon detection grid.

[Darth Yoshi]

And you can do that with 2000 troops? The Federation can't muster enough forces to overwhelm that?
Was there or was there not a Romulan warbird right alongside the Vulcan ship? Could it possibly, just possibly have held more troops, WMD's, or something else that when Vulcan's planetary defenses go down would allow to seize control with ease?

Hell if the Romulans have enough ships cloaked and ready to make a run to Vulcan, the assualt force need only blow the defenses so the Warbirds can make it to Vulcan and set down real occupation forces. Remember a group of feddie cadets brought down the entire frikking power grid on earth. I see no reason why a few thousand Romulans with advantage of surprise couldn't acheive at least something similar.

Warbirds carry 100 troops, tops. Real troops, I mean. And how did we get to troops, anyway? Don't try to hijack the thread, man.
Anyway, active sensors will give away a ship's location. CGTs detect gravity changes, like the one's caused by arti-grav on a moving ship.

[ClaysGhost]

I don't know where this wake business turned up from - I don't get it. We're not on the sea now. As for the heat sink business, you have to be able to cool the hull significantly, thermal insulation and heatshields and all (where would you get a precooled hull from?) It'll therefore take time, and you'll have to do this in space, since leaving the atmosphere of a planet would cause some heating (even assuming it's not a warm planet anyway), so you need a safe area guaranteed free of enemy shipping, which might be difficult if they managed to flush their heatsink before you did. Cooling the hull will dump heat into your heatsink, and since the mass of the hull that needs cooling is likely to be greater than the mass of the heatsink, you have a significant problem right from the beginning. This is also assuming you can avoid firing the engines yet accomplish your mission, which will generate waste energy that you must absorb. You have a ship that is less maneovreable, has a higher mass, requires significant lead-up time to cloaking and most likely requires the crew to wear space suits all the time, compared to a ship minus the cloaking system. Is it even worth it? Use your heatsink to cool missiles before launch (launch them magnetically or with cold gas) and they're slightly more likely to make it through enemy point-defences.

[Neko_Oni]

It's essentially impossible to disguise the thermal emissions of a spacecraft. Your ship draws a certain amount of power even in at a minimum power consumption. You have to offload the heat this generates somewhere or your ship and crew will fry. Unless you have a super heat sink that can store massive amounts of heat (Niven's Puppeteer Ships can do this) or can somehow direct the heat in a laser-like beam (Uplift series ships have done this) you're going to have to simply use normal heat sinks to radiate the energy to space, which everyone is going to spot.

[Mr Bean]

What is this EM radiation supposed to impact against to create a wake? Now assuming it is a trail, there is nothing in space to impact against to create such a omnidirectional "wake". It would be unidirectional, as in not visible from other points of view like a regular wake in the sea, except directly behind. You can't detect the photons of sunlight going to to Jupiter unless you are directly in that path.

*Sigh sigh sigh

Fokes what happens if you Set a Set a Pieace of Paper on-fire in your house?

Everything around the Fire gets temprorary realy hot and then the heat slowly spreads out into the rest of the room then the rest of the house where it might only be a .00001K by the time it hits your entire house

The wake example is the fact a Hot Object in space(Like a Starship) will emit heat, this heat then slowly moves out in a cloud if the ship is stationary or in a "wake" if the ship is moving

Thanks to the nature of Space this Heat spread is VERY slow, so much so that where a Ship has moved will be as much as 50 K tens of hours later

Take the Heat generated on the Nattleces(sp?) of the avarge SF ship, That glow is not just pretty lights but waste heat being dumped and judging by the Color and Length its dumping a few thousand Kelvin's into Space, That is going to be noticable for QUITE some time fokes and plainly visable to 20th Century Consumer Equipmenmt if one could get within Ten Kilometers(And not expolded due to decompression)

Second
WHAT IS THIS?

You can't detect the photons of sunlight going to to Jupiter unless you are directly in that path.

Your talking about PHOTONS? What does that have to do with Infared Radition and Heat Energy?


To say it another way
Fokes.
HEAT DOES NOT MOVE AT C

[Neko_Oni]

Everything around the Fire gets temprorary realy hot and then the heat slowly spreads out into the rest of the room then the rest of the house where it might only be a .00001K by the time it hits your entire house

The fire spreads it's heat using both radiation AND convection/conduction. A ship in space cannot use convection or conduction to dissipate heat, it must use radiation.

The wake example is the fact a Hot Object in space(Like a Starship) will emit heat, this heat then slowly moves out in a cloud if the ship is stationary or in a "wake" if the ship is moving

The hot object will indeed emit heat, this heat will move outward from the ship at a sedate 300,000km/s.

Your talking about PHOTONS? What does that have to do with Infared Radition and Heat Energy?

Infrared Radiation IS photons, just a lower frequency variety.

To say it another way
Folkes.
HEAT DOES NOT MOVE AT C

By conduction and convection heat does not move at c. However by radiation the thermal energy will move at c. Hence the ship will not produce a 'heat wake' it will just radiate its heat in all directions for everyone to see.

[Sparkticus]

Infrared Radiation IS photons, just a lower frequency variety.

That is correct. Infra-Red is just another part of the EMR spectrum, and like everything else EM, travels at c.

[Zoink]

Even the deepest reaches of space, in between the galactic clusters, isn't completely empty. In interstellar space, the density is about 1 atom/cm^3. I think Mr.Bean is refering to the energy imparted to these atoms. The warp-speed cloaked ship will be interacting with about 1^14 atoms each second (warp 1).

---------

Which gets me to thinking: .... didn't the Enterprise counter the Picard maneuver by detecting displaced gas from the Stargazer??? Couldn't a similar system be used to detect cloaks in combat???

[Neko_Oni]

[quote = "Zoink"]Even the deepest reaches of space, in between the galactic clusters, isn't completely empty. In interstellar space, the density is about 1 atom/cm^3. I think Mr.Bean is refering to the energy imparted to these atoms. The warp-speed cloaked ship will be interacting with about 1^14 atoms each second (warp 1). [/quote]
If the ship is hitting atoms at warp 1, the hull isn't going to be able to transmit any of it's heat to it. However the atoms will certainly be disturbed, most likely in a highly noticable way (how fast is warp 1, I don't follow trek at all).

[Zoink]

If the ship is hitting atoms at warp 1, the hull isn't going to be able to transmit any of it's heat to it. However the atoms will certainly be disturbed, most likely in a highly noticable way (how fast is warp 1, I don't follow trek at all)

Warp 1 is equal to 300,000 km/s = 3^10 cm/s

[Yossarian]

The Klingons seem to cloak before each attack. Since the gas detecter in ST 6 was fitted so easily why aren't they fitted os standard. This would allow Star Fleet or anybody else to hit Klingon ships they know are attacking them neutralizing the advatage of cloak in combat

[Mr Bean]

Thank Zoink for getting to the heart of the matter I'm refering to

Space is not Pure Vacume, there are no pure Vacumes naturley made(That we know about)

It is the imparting of energy to Space that is dectable much like a single Ripple is in the ocean is dectable with sphoisicated enough instruments though your looking at no where as daunting a Task, Around objects yes Heat-Flow is midden to quite useless as is Around Stars and what-not but in normal Space(Such as between This Solar System and Alpha Centauire, or just out and about the Solar system istself) is where Heat Flow is most useful, the cloud I refer to BTW is the extra active Photons that are moving thanks to the induction of energy into the system via the ship's heat radiation and your mistaken however conduction and Convection ARE possible and do happen in space, just not constantly as one would say in an Atompshere or a Neblua

Or what would you call the Hydrogen impacting the ship then boucing off faster radiation?

[Zoink]

The Klingons seem to cloak before each attack. Since the gas detecter in ST 6 was fitted so easily why aren't they fitted os standard. This would allow Star Fleet or anybody else to hit Klingon ships they know are attacking them neutralizing the advatage of cloak in combat

In ST6, they detected the particles given off from the impulse engines. As long as current Romulan/Klingon impulse engines give off particles then this should still work.

I believe that impulse engines run off fusion reactors (at least my E-D cutaway poster shows they are), the klingons were dumping the waste out a "tailpipe". Although it would be smarter to collect the waste and dump it at intervals (when nobody is looking).

But you are right, these types of systems should be standard on all Trek ships. Even *IF* the klingons have solved this problem, other races might not have. Calculating position from engine emmisions, displaced gas, visual distortions, whatever, should be as easy as pushing a button.

But like Wong said: Trek sensors suck. The last Voyager episode I watched was a good example... A ship comes into sensor range, but is "too far away" to determine what it it. Janeway says "on screen" and they see a borg cube... hmmm, OK so their senors can't "scan it", BUT they *can* see the ship. They lack a simple system that can identify a ship based on visual data only (a simply object recognition program). Alarm bells should have been ringing right away.

[Yossarian]

Zoink Wrote:

In ST6, they detected the particles given off from the impulse engines. As long as current Romulan/Klingon impulse engines give off particles then this should still work.

The only sub light drive that don't give off particles are gravity type drives. All others seem to use particles of some sort to push the ship along.

[Neko_Oni]

I'm not sure what you're getting at here Bean.

the cloud I refer to BTW is the extra active Photons that are moving thanks to the induction of energy into the system via the ship's heat radiation

Is this the same cloud that moves slowly away from the ship?

and your mistaken however conduction and Convection ARE possible and do happen in space, just not constantly as one would say in an Atompshere or a Neblua

Yes they do occur, but in terms of using them to remove heat from a ship (which is what I was talking about) anyone who relied on such a method would die from overheating very quickly. Incidentally most nebulae are considered to be a near perfect vacuum as far as we are concerned.