The Alamo Contingency has already failed

Daryl wrote:In a universe where 6 MT SDs can continually accelerate at 500g (versus ours where a 7 kt moon rocket gets up to 7g for a matter of minutes) you have to just assume that physics are different.

I certainly concur. I am simply saying that in DW's universe, physics will be different for the LD as well.

I have always had a problem with fans wanting to allow handwavium for the good guys but never the bad. Bad guys just never pay their handwavium bill.

penny wrote:The LDs are dead in the water before they are launched if you are correct. No spider drive detector needed.

No, they are not "dead in the water"; there is a flaw, but it just means that they cannot get as close to their targets as you thought. But if there were no flaw, then they would be invincible and the Malign would be favored to win by the oddsmakers. In that case how could the Grand Alliance win in a reasonable number of books?

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:The LDs are dead in the water before they are launched if you are correct. No spider drive detector needed.

No, they are not "dead in the water"; there is a flaw, but it just means that they cannot get as close to their targets as you thought. But if there were no flaw, then they would be invincible and the Malign would be favored to win by the oddsmakers. In that case how could the Grand Alliance win in a reasonable number of books?

I wouldn't even call it a flaw - that indicates that something has failed to work as designed or will fail.

It's physics - or a best a technological limitation. It's just the way this technology behaves. Just like no matter how you shape the blades of a ship's propeller, there will always be "some" water cavitation which causes detectible noise - you can take measures to mitigate it, use other systems like bubblers to hide it, and optimize the design to reduce it, but the effect will always exist as a part of physics.

Here, as we've said, fusion reactors and ship systems generate massive amounts of heat, and the smart skin and stealth features can radiate that heat into a "small" cone whose direction can be altered at whim - but the system requires the heat be directed "somewhere" - And the right observer in the right location will be able to see it.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:The LDs are dead in the water before they are launched if you are correct. No spider drive detector needed.

No, they are not "dead in the water"; there is a flaw, but it just means that they cannot get as close to their targets as you thought. But if there were no flaw, then they would be invincible and the Malign would be favored to win by the oddsmakers. In that case how could the Grand Alliance win in a reasonable number of books?

Ok, well, you tell me what you consider as extremely close. Let me guess. The infamous 1-light second?

Well, in your - and others like you - favor. If waste heat is really a problem for the LD, then I agree with all of you that the LD better remain on the outskirts of town err the system and simply launch ISBMs. What a waste. Another letdown of an adversary.

I don't believe it. What I do believe is that the GA will develop a spider drive detector. Heck, Simoes could have simply informed them to look to the sun!!!

penny wrote:What I do believe is that the GA will develop a spider drive detector. Heck, Simoes could have simply informed them to look to the sun!!!

We know that Herlander was involved in improvements to the streak drive and other projects. But we do not know what those other projects are; they need not involve the spider drive. It seems likely that he had heard of it, because we have the Detweilers reading intelligence indications that the Manties are talking about it after Cachet's return to Haven. But, as KZT is fond of pointing out, the Grand Alliance may not be acting as if they know the full implications. That depends on how they are deploying their drones.

PS: I consider "extremely close" to be just outside the deployed drones.

I found it! Calm down cthia.

Excerpt:

Below is a table of the emissivity of major materials. The key point to remember when looking at this table is that emissivity varies depending on the physical properties of the surface of the object and is independent from the physical properties of the base material, i.e., the material inside the surface of an object. Therefore, emissivity can be controlled by polishing, oxidizing, or by applying paint to the surface.

During my hiatus from the forum, I came across an article with which I thought helped explain what the MA was doing with their smart paint. It took some time to locate it, because it was on someone else's computer in another city.

It has to do with the properties of a black body. Which is what I thought explained one aspect of the LDs stealth and its smart paint. Except that a black body does not exist in reality. (Handwavium). However, who is to say that we cannot or will not manage to create a black body or its applications by the timeline of the HV.

However, it doesn't quite seem to be what the LD does. And/or, I suppose it is what the LD accomplishes but it does not exactly pull it off. But, then, that breaks the laws of physics of a black body which only has values between 0 and 1. And not any values beyond that range. I can overlook that as well. The LD simply might not be large enough… even so!

At any rate, because of this application, I was more easily able to suspend disbelief; thus coming to a conclusion that waste heat will not be a problem for the LD.

IOW, a black body application solves the waste heat problem just like dumping waste heat into a wedge does. I'd think that a black body application would work even better than the wedge solution.

HOWEVER, I am upset that you people have literally turned me into clones of yourselves. Y'all got me challenging the veracity of sci-fi. Wait, what? That is Not me! I will never read sci-fi with a slipstick on my hip.

https://techtimes.dexerials.jp/en/elect ... radiation/

penny wrote:I came across an article with which I thought helped explain what the MA was doing with their smart paint. It took some time to locate it, because it was on someone else's computer in another city.

It has to do with the properties of a black body. Which is what I thought explained one aspect of the LDs stealth and its smart paint. Except that a black body does not exist in reality. (Handwavium). However, who is to say that we cannot or will not manage to create a black body or its applications by the timeline of the HV.

The equivalent of a black body can be built today and I believe that it has been known for over a century: take a hollow iron sphere and drill a hole in it. When you heat that sphere up, the radiation that emerges from that hole will have the profile of a black body: the Planck's distribution.

The thing that goes from zero to one is the emissivity and is a measure of effectiveness in emitting energy as thermal radiation.

The edit is because I incorrectly said Boltzmann and not Planck. I do not believe this relieves of problem of waste heat disposal.

tlb wrote:As for the stealth: what I was writing with the Silver Bullet was because you were saying they proved Malign stealth was better and that is wrong. Now you may look at the text posted in this thread and say this is beyond what the GA can do and so their sensors must be better also. Any statement about sensors simply does not follow. The whole smart paint thing is something that can be done today with flat panel displays. We simply do not know what the full capabilities are of everything possessed by the GA.

Agreed, I was going to make that argument.

We do know that the MAlign has very good stealth and I'll grant that it's probably much better than the GA stealth, at least for larger objects. The GA has never needed to hide very big vessels because they would usually have wedges up. As RFC wrote, a wedge is like a "200 million candle light cannon in a dark room" -- you can't miss it for the world. And yet we do know they have good stealth all the same, as the Ghost Riders keep not getting identified at all. Those are constantly getting to within 100,000 km of SLN ships without being seen. Heck, Adm. Alice Truman hid 6 battle squadrons from the SLN (though that was against Tsang and we know just how "good" that admiral was).

It does follow that the MAlign would have invested in sensors too. They knew about the Ghost Rider drones, so they would have researched and stolen sensor improvements as much as possible. But it does not follow that they've actually succeeded in superior sensors to the GA. There has never been an instance of MAN assets detecting Ghost Riders for us to know whether they can or cannot. In fact, I don't think this is a limitation of storytelling: I don't think they've even had the chance. The closest it could have happened would be in Beowulf during Operation Fabius, because at that point they'd have known the Ghost Riders would be deployed and could have thus hidden assets to attempt to detect them.

This does not mean the GA sensors are superior either. I'm simply saying there's no way we can make the logical argument one way or the other.

However, given the crucible of war, I'd put my money on the GA sensors being better, especially now with Shannon and Sonja comparing notes. And yet, "better" does not imply "good enough."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:As for the stealth: what I was writing with the Silver Bullet was because you were saying they proved Malign stealth was better and that is wrong. Now you may look at the text posted in this thread and say this is beyond what the GA can do and so their sensors must be better also. Any statement about sensors simply does not follow. The whole smart paint thing is something that can be done today with flat panel displays. We simply do not know what the full capabilities are of everything possessed by the GA.

Agreed, I was going to make that argument.

We do know that the MAlign has very good stealth and I'll grant that it's probably much better than the GA stealth, at least for larger objects. The GA has never needed to hide very big vessels because they would usually have wedges up. As RFC wrote, a wedge is like a "200 million candle light cannon in a dark room" -- you can't miss it for the world. And yet we do know they have good stealth all the same, as the Ghost Riders keep not getting identified at all. Those are constantly getting to within 100,000 km of SLN ships without being seen. Heck, Adm. Alice Truman hid 6 battle squadrons from the SLN (though that was against Tsang and we know just how "good" that admiral was).

It does follow that the MAlign would have invested in sensors too. They knew about the Ghost Rider drones, so they would have researched and stolen sensor improvements as much as possible. But it does not follow that they've actually succeeded in superior sensors to the GA. There has never been an instance of MAN assets detecting Ghost Riders for us to know whether they can or cannot. In fact, I don't think this is a limitation of storytelling: I don't think they've even had the chance. The closest it could have happened would be in Beowulf during Operation Fabius, because at that point they'd have known the Ghost Riders would be deployed and could have thus hidden assets to attempt to detect them.

This does not mean the GA sensors are superior either. I'm simply saying there's no way we can make the logical argument one way or the other.

However, given the crucible of war, I'd put my money on the GA sensors being better, especially now with Shannon and Sonja comparing notes. And yet, "better" does not imply "good enough."

Fair enough! I can accept this post. Actually, I love this post. In your previous post you stated that it is likely that the GA's stealth is better. I can't agree with that. For all of the reasons you just stated, and the fact that since they do have better stealth, gives them something to play with and try to locate. They have a better yardstick in which to measure their sensors.

"Can you see me now?"

"Nope"

"Can you see me now?"

"Nope."

Plus the fact that they are so frickin paranoid. If they can't locate their own subs, everybody can defect.

Of course, the US don't always know where their subs are either. But that is different.

It also stands to reason that if the LD can't detect GA drones, they're in for a lot of hurt.

Tlb, that is not what I said. I said the fact that their stealth is better, makes it intuitive that it would lead to better sensors. Not necessarily, no, but if I had to bet, I would bet on black in this case. (Dark, shadowy entity).

What I said is that the Silver Bullets are an indication of my assertion that their better stealth would lead to better sensors. No other navy has ever been able to find stealthy GA platforms. I am sure that shocked them.

I know. I know. You all downplay it because the MA had lots of time. Manty blind fans.

Relax wrote:As soon as DW had ~250 ton Drones able to fly under wedge in near ~perfect stealth from an entire fleet, any rational discussion of "sensors" or Stealth, went out the window. Complete Plot armor at this point.

As for Penny... "heat not a problem>>>"

Wedge sumps suck up the excess heat and inertia of the ships in question making DW's universe able to function. Spiders have ZERO wedge sumps bud. I'll let you figure out how much excess heat has to be radiated on a ~4Mton(shark), let alone a 10Mton LD ship with an acceleration capability of 250G @ even 99.9% efficiency... Lets just say its surface temperature will be Hotter than a sun making ANYONE able to see it from Light Years away. Let alone a Light second or a light minute.

It will be brighter than the local sun!!! Even 1970's star trackers would EASILY see it let alone Honorverse equivalents in the future.

This whole "discussion" is an absurd joke regardless of how one actually uses different types of sensors.

Someone pointed somewhere on the spacewar site that a commercial off-the shelf IR camera should be able to to detect the waste heat from a fusion reactor at the distance of Saturn. It think it was under the ‘there is no stealth in space’ title.