SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread V

[Simon_Jester]

Well, we have known unknowns.

Ah, but do you know that you don't know the things that you think you know that you don't, in point of fact, know?

Never mind. Rhetorical question, obviously.

[Lonestar]

Ah, but do you know that you don't know the things that you think you know that you don't, in point of fact, know?

Watch it.

[Force Lord]

AAARGH! A misplaced button press ended up wiping out a story post I was working on. And I was close to finishing it, too...

[Beowulf]

AAARGH! A misplaced button press ended up wiping out a story post I was working on. And I was close to finishing it, too...

Always, always, always, write somewhere other than the reply box. I use notepad++ saving to a dropbox folder.

[Shroom Man 777]

I repeatedly copy/paste from Open Office. I have copies of my bigger posts in my HD.

[Karmic Knight]

I write all my posts/storyline plans/maths/anything/everything in Word/Excel docs, which has served me well so far.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Why would radiation scatter off a relativistic target that wasn't accelerating?

[fgalkin]

Why would radiation scatter off a relativistic target that wasn't accelerating?

Because it's going really fast? You don't need to be going faster every second to send atoms flying in everywhich direction from colliding with your giant ship going at relativistic velocities.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Why would radiation scatter off a relativistic target that wasn't accelerating?

Because it's going really fast? You don't need to be going faster every second to send atoms flying in everywhich direction from colliding with your giant ship going at relativistic velocities.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Erm no. Only charged particles only radiate when they are accelerating.

More over, if we want to be pedantic about this, the ships would have picked a route where they wouldn't run into solar winds too. And the amount of radiation that would scatter off would be so miniscule it could be construed as noise.

[Simon_Jester]

Why would radiation scatter off a relativistic target that wasn't accelerating?

For the same reasons raindrops scatter off a lump of concrete? See, the random interstellar particles aren't moving until they hit your ship, at which point they accelerate rather sharply.

What's being detected here is, as Fima says, the equivalent of a wake: When you travel at speeds on the order of 0.1c or higher, every time you hit a random interstellar proton you're experiencing the equivalent of a cosmic ray impact in the 100 MeV range. That's apt to scatter a bit.

Or, more generally, Rule #4 of Things Not To Do So Your Cloaked Ship Won't Get Spotted... thou shalt not go too fast. Almost without exception, any form of stealth works better when you aren't smacking into things.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Why would radiation scatter off a relativistic target that wasn't accelerating?

For the same reasons raindrops scatter off a lump of concrete? See, the random interstellar particles aren't moving until they hit your ship, at which point they accelerate rather sharply.

What's being detected here is, as Fima says, the equivalent of a wake: When you travel at speeds on the order of 0.1c or higher, every time you hit a random interstellar proton you're experiencing the equivalent of a cosmic ray impact in the 100 MeV range. That's apt to scatter a bit.

Or, more generally, Rule #4 of Things Not To Do So Your Cloaked Ship Won't Get Spotted... thou shalt not go too fast. Almost without exception, any form of stealth works better when you aren't smacking into things.

A typical flyby isn't within the system where cosmic rays are in abundance. A typical fly by would be skirting the edge of the system from the top. No Byzantine ship would approach the inner system because we have more problems to care about, like possible gravitational wave sensors.

[Shroom Man 777]

Either way, it's really no different from a bunch of Iraqis or Serbians seeing a hazy indeterminate blip on their radar and randomly opening up all their SAMs and AAAs and not even hitting anywhere near their target, while the F-117/B-2 flies away without even its paint scratched.

Since everyone has spy ships near the MEH, I'd imagine there'd be other incidents like this too. Let's hope the fatties don't cook up some kind of clever thinggy to try and catch someone's stealth ship.

[Darkevilme]

dunno what you're making such a big deal about here Fingolfin. it's the MEH that have been made a further fool out of, all you got was some hideous fat man farting in your general direction.

[Beowulf]

I object! Grand Captain Cortez would only be able to eat a rare steak through a blender. The fatties don't have the capacity to eat solid food.

--

Fin: avoiding the solar wind would require being outside the solar wind temination shock, or at least 9 light hours from the star. Not that it matters, since if you're outside that region, you've got the interstellar medium to worry about, which will have the same problems with regard to relativistic scattering. It'd almost certainly be a weak signal, but it's still a signal.

[Simon_Jester]

A typical flyby isn't within the system where cosmic rays are in abundance. A typical fly by would be skirting the edge of the system from the top. No Byzantine ship would approach the inner system because we have more problems to care about, like possible gravitational wave sensors.

You misunderstand. Some poor innocent little hydrogen atom is just floating along, minding its own business, when an Imperial Navy stealth ship comes blazing along at 0.1c and smacks into it. From an outside frame of reference (such as MEH detection systems), this is a ~100 MeV event, which is apt to produce more than a little in the way of sidescatter and radiation that can be detected and tracked.

You're not hitting cosmic rays, Fin. You're creating them.

I object! Grand Captain Cortez would only be able to eat a rare steak through a blender. The fatties don't have the capacity to eat solid food.

Nonsense. Cortez is a military MEHman. Tougher! Fitter!

He is perfectly capable of chewing solid food and standing up without robotic assistance.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

A typical flyby isn't within the system where cosmic rays are in abundance. A typical fly by would be skirting the edge of the system from the top. No Byzantine ship would approach the inner system because we have more problems to care about, like possible gravitational wave sensors.

You misunderstand. Some poor innocent little hydrogen atom is just floating along, minding its own business, when an Imperial Navy stealth ship comes blazing along at 0.1c and smacks into it. From an outside frame of reference (such as MEH detection systems), this is a ~100 MeV event, which is apt to produce more than a little in the way of sidescatter and radiation that can be detected and tracked.

You're not hitting cosmic rays, Fin. You're creating them.

And the rare off event of running into a hydrogen atom and a detector in the right place and time is...?

[Simon_Jester]

And the rare off event of running into a hydrogen atom and a detector in the right place and time is...?

Do you really want me to do the math?
Spoiler

Well, the density is something like one per thousand cubic centimeters. Your mighty Byzantine ships are probably something like a hundred thousand square meters in frontal cross-section, if not more. Therefore, per meter traveled, you can confidently expect to hit about one hundred million atoms. You are traveling at, let us say, 10% of light speed, so strike approximately three trillion atoms per second, all of which are getting blasted aside like this... it does add up.

EDIT: And of course, that isn't even factoring in the larger-than-atomic-sized objects: dust specks, micrometeoroids, the like.

So that does generate a fairly significant cosmic ray track that a well designed sensor can detect- and any civilized star system would need such detectors, precisely to avoid being utterly ruined by long range relativistic bombardment.

Gamma ray detectors tend to be very sensitive- today, the main ones in existence are used as astronomical telescopes, which means spotting as many counts as possible.

So no, if you really want to avoid being seen while passing near an inhabited star system, I wouldn't advise going too fast.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

And the rare off event of running into a hydrogen atom and a detector in the right place and time is...?

Do you really want me to do the math?
Spoiler

Well, the density is something like one per thousand cubic centimeters. Your mighty Byzantine ships are probably something like a hundred thousand square meters in frontal cross-section, if not more. Therefore, per meter traveled, you can confidently expect to hit about one hundred million atoms. You are traveling at, let us say, 10% of light speed, so strike approximately three trillion atoms per second, all of which are getting blasted aside like this... it does add up.

EDIT: And of course, that isn't even factoring in the larger-than-atomic-sized objects: dust specks, micrometeoroids, the like.

So that does generate a fairly significant cosmic ray track that a well designed sensor can detect- and any civilized star system would need such detectors, precisely to avoid being utterly ruined by long range relativistic bombardment.

Gamma ray detectors tend to be very sensitive- today, the main ones in existence are used as astronomical telescopes, which means spotting as many counts as possible.

So no, if you really want to avoid being seen while passing near an inhabited star system, I wouldn't advise going too fast.

Neither is going deep in-system possible, since the enemy if competent enough can set up detection grids in-system which involve the emission of gravitational waves and placing the necessary detectors here and there to pick up stealth ships. Sure i shouldn't be going too fast, but the whole point is to be in and out within a small finite time and staying outside the system so I could make a quick Warp jump if necessary. And what's to stop me from coating the ship with a porous coating to absorb the incoming atoms and radiation?

And the "mighty" ships are 75pts which aren't much larger than stealth ships from other states, some of which are 60pts thereabouts.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, our solution would be to jump in and just... you know... not fly around at relativistic speeds. That just makes things needlessly complicated. It's not as if you get better sensor pictures while moving around fast enough to significantly redshift everything you see on the screen.

EDIT:

Also, new update!

Shepistanis never negotiate with terrorists. They may, however, intimidate third parties into doing so...

...and soon, perhaps, we will find out what Migwazza and friends got up to when they made it to the ork homelands!

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Well, our solution would be to jump in and just... you know... not fly around at relativistic speeds. That just makes things needlessly complicated. It's not as if you get better sensor pictures while moving around fast enough to significantly redshift everything you see on the screen.

That from a fellow who spies in hyperspace? Riiiigggghhhhttt.

[Siege]

Less technobabble and more joint plotting please guys. And may I just say that while I agree that flying around at relativistic speed with a stealth ship is probably not the best of ideas, I'm also not convinced that the creation of detectable cosmic rays is inevitable when we've introduced at least a half dozen stealth technologies the Imperium could conceivably have applied to its spy ships in order to prevent detection this way.

[Shroom Man 777]

Mang, are people computating if electrons are spherical masses of iron? Bwuh.

I wish Shep shows some graph about how a 1950s fighter plane could shoot down their spaceships.

[Mayabird]

I object! Grand Captain Cortez would only be able to eat a rare steak through a blender. The fatties don't have the capacity to eat solid food.

Nonsense. Cortez is a military MEHman. Tougher! Fitter!

He is perfectly capable of chewing solid food and standing up without robotic assistance.

On rereading it, it doesn't say that Cortez is actually eating the steak, only that he tastes the blood in his mouth. He might not be chewing it, just sucking the blood and juices out - like a vampire! They have vampire captains!

[Simon_Jester]

I like Mayabird's idea. Except who ever heard of a grossly obese vampire?

Less technobabble and more joint plotting please guys. And may I just say that while I agree that flying around at relativistic speed with a stealth ship is probably not the best of ideas, I'm also not convinced that the creation of detectable cosmic rays is inevitable when we've introduced at least a half dozen stealth technologies the Imperium could conceivably have applied to its spy ships in order to prevent detection this way.

All I'm gonna say is that going really really fast gives the Lost and the MEH a viable detection method, one that easily explains the question "how was the ship spotted?" Maybe it called a little extra attention to itself by accidentally colliding with a bit of space gravel in a fluke accident that released the yield of a small nuclear bomb in a fluke no one could have predicted, and then the other people's cosmic ray trackers noticed something fishy. Who knows?

Or maybe Byzantine recon doctrine is less interested in sitting around and lurking, and more interested in blazingly fast runs SR-71 style, with the ships not actually caring if someone knows they were there as long as the have enough stealth, and speed, to avoid being localized and shot down- relying on speed and long range sensor resolution to get good information, while keeping the enemy from spotting them in time to do anything about it, as with the failure of the MEH megacruiser to do anything about this Byzantine ship.

[Shroom Man 777]

I like Mayabird's idea. Except who ever heard of a grossly obese vampire?

All I'm gonna say is that going really really fast gives the Lost and the MEH a viable detection method, one that easily explains the question "how was the ship spotted?" Maybe it called a little extra attention to itself by accidentally colliding with a bit of space gravel in a fluke accident that released the yield of a small nuclear bomb in a fluke no one could have predicted, and then the other people's cosmic ray trackers noticed something fishy. Who knows?

I don't really care for the hydrogen atoms bouncing off hulls and stuff, but with all the amount of stealth ship traffic in and around the MEH, and so on, leik I said it's not too far fetched for the MEH to see some sensor phantoms in their grids and blindly fire at these ghosts - like what the Iraqis did when the F-117s violated their airspace again and again and again.

Or maybe Byzantine recon doctrine is less interested in sitting around and lurking, and more interested in blazingly fast runs SR-71 style, with the ships not actually caring if someone knows they were there as long as the have enough stealth, and speed, to avoid being localized and shot down- relying on speed and long range sensor resolution to get good information, while keeping the enemy from spotting them in time to do anything about it, as with the failure of the MEH megacruiser to do anything about this Byzantine ship.

It can use modified Ferrario sports engines!

This gives me a good idea though. Recon gunskimmers! They see it on the radars, they see it on the infrareds lighting up like a thousand suns by virtue of its exhausts, but it's so fast that it zips in and out of the system while spy-bears take photographs with huge ass film cameras.