[SG?] Cammo

> From Ryan Gill:

> ...I've been making infantry fighting positions for SG, they are

Why is it that Jarheads go to all the trouble of buying and painting cool
minis only to hide them in/behind/under meticulously crafted cammo?

Just wondering

> At 7:20 AM -0400 8/10/01, Izenberg, Noam wrote:

:p
Because its much more accurate that way. Would you prefer we paint them bright
bright red with little skulls all over them? *blech*

Are your ships painted bright spry colours or are they nice low viz colors in
Visibile and EMF? The latter is far safer.

If you let anything get close enough to actually recognize your ship visually,
let alone any marking on the hull, you have failed anyway.

> At 8:07 AM -0400 8/10/01, Bell, Brian K (Contractor) wrote:

Umm, perhaps. Seems that long base telescopes and stadio-metric
ranging systems would be used at some point in engagements more often than
not. Especialyl given there is no horizon to speak of. What is an MU? Is a
ship visible at 12 MU? The Shuttle is observable from ground with telescopes
that will track. So are other spacecraft. Seems to me a low observable color
would make more sense.

Afterall, If I can plot a firing solution visually before you acquire me with
radar, then I may just get a nice first salvo off.

Convention holds a mu at about 1000km. Although some of us play it at
1/4
light second (~70,000km).

-----
Brian Bell
-----

[quoted original message omitted]

> At 8:28 AM -0400 8/10/01, Bell, Brian K (Contractor) wrote:

Hmm, I was thinking about this further in the shower. If the beam weapons are
really just lasers then its an optical beam anyhow right? Being able to get
one on a target is just an exercise in optics, fire control and aiming
components then correct?

Well, a computer could be set up to watch specific portions of space, by
looking for abnormalities like glint, occluded stars and extra objects, a
defender could easily begin tracking bogeys only with optical gear. No active
emissions. Though they would have had to have been there a while so as to be
able to track most if not all objects they'd be using as a comparative data
base. Once the computer had a hit, you'd have a crewman check it out with long
range optical gear attached to a fine res CCD sensor system.

Ships would be easily recognized based on outline and form unless they take
measures to make that more difficult. Now if Jon meant to do this or not I'm
not sure, but notice how most NAC vessels have a similar outline? Basic
optical camo just like the Germans used in WWII. Scharnhorst identified as
other ships because she looked like the other ships, just a bit different in
size...

> On Aug 10, Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:

Not quite, but those elements will definitely be involved. In theory you're
right I suspect. In practise, it's never that simple, but it might be
close....

> Well, a computer could be set up to watch specific portions of

Hate to say it, but you don't win any prizes for originality. This idea has
been suggested many times, and it seems likely that it would be the main way
of detecting things, with one change. Looking for optical signatures is ok,
especially for reflection (even a 99.99% black surface still outshines stars
which we can see in today's telescopes). However, more useful is likely to be
looking for heat. Assuming your spaceship is crewed by humans or a near
equivalent, they'll want an internal temperature of somewhere around 20
degrees centigrade (close enough to 300 kelvins). Thus, their ship will be a
blackbody emmitter at roughly that temperature. Unfortunately, you can't
disguise your emmitted heat with camo, and you can't look like most objects in
the solar system without
lowering your internal temperatures to -150 or so. Your crew may not
be pleased to be living in those conditions. If there's only one telescope
looking from one direction, you can reduce these effects through active
baffling and radiators pointing in the other direction (although it'll reduce
your efficiency and depending on how much you're trying to mask, it'll run you
right into the limits of materials technology and the 2nd law of
thermodynamics). However, such radiators are dead easy to spot, and so if
there are a number of telescopes in many locations, active baffling doesn't
really help you. This is the main reason that your
paint job doesn't make too much difference -- you'll probably be
spotted by your blackbody curve long before you could be spotted based on
reflected visible light.

> --- Brian A Quirt <baqrt@mta.ca> wrote:
...
> Assuming your spaceship is crewed by humans or

Would it be possible to use some kind of refrigerated insulated outer hull to
block the heat? Of course this would give the ship a BIG problem of getting
rid of waste heat, but it might work for short periods. Of course I'm not a
physicist, so there may be some fundamental problem I'm overlooking.

> On Aug 10, David Griffin <carbon_dragon@yahoo.com> wrote:

Yes and no (hate to do that, but I'll continue with the full explanation). It
IS possible to store your heat temporarily (eventually you have to get rid of
it, and the longer you wait, the more you have to get rid of). Unfortunately,
storing heat can be quite difficult. You could, for example, keep a tank full
of liquid hydrogen (or oxygen, or nitrogen, or helium if you want, or
whatever) onboard, and use it to store your waste heat. How long that'll give
you depends on
how much waste heat (crew + reactor + drive + whatever else) you
generate and on how much cold stuff you have to absorb heat. Eventually,
though, it's at the same temperature as your outer hull, and then you have to
go on to the next paragraph. You can also store heat in something that's
hotter than your outer hull. This runs you into the second law of
thermodynamics. Essentially, it takes energy to move heat from a cooler object
to a hotter object. The greater the difference in temperatures, the more
energy (formulae are in my physics text which is stored in New Brunswick, a
mere 1600km from my desk at work). And, of course, whatever reactor you're
using to get this energy probably generates waste heat (ok, DEFINITELY
generates SOME waste heat, it's just a question of how much), which is more
heat you have to store into your heat sink, which requires more energy,
which.... How long you can keep all of that up depends on your tech level,
your power requirements, how much heat you have to get rid of, who is (might
be) looking for you, etc. Whether or not its worthwhile
depends on the answer to the above, and also on the all-important
question of how much it costs to be stealthy, and how effective it is. Of
course, there is still a third option. If you are using a reaction drive, and
you have it on, you can dump the heat into your rection mass. The less
efficient your drive is (and hence, the higher
thrust it has for a given power-density), the more heat you can get
rid of this way. Of course, that means that your exhaust is heated, but I
think the topic of how easy your drive plume is to detect should be given a
brief rest. And, of course, if you don't have a drive plume, it doesn't matter
anyway....

> --- Brian A Quirt <baqrt@mta.ca> wrote:
...
> It IS possible to store your heat temporarily

Ok, so we're talking about something which is short duration. Suppose you have
a good paint job (or a hull which "paints" the universe on the opposite side
of the ship on the side near the target) and this liquid nitrogen hull
insulation and suppose you only want it to cover your approach to the target.
Could come as a big surprise when you arrive, couldn't it?

Of course you can resort to "magical" level tech like Dr.Who's Tardis.
Presumably the waste heat generated by this device is in a different
dimension. Who knows what the Tardis looks like to sensors when it doesn't
want to be seen?

> On Aug 10, David Griffin <carbon_dragon@yahoo.com> wrote:

It could. The question is not "can you do it" but "is the effect worth the
cost." If your drive can be detected from here to Pluto, it's probably not
worth cooling off your hull. On the other hand, if the only ways to detect
ships are a) visual observation, b) infrared observation (based on blackbody
temperature), and c) active sensors, then an actively cooled hull might be
worthwhile, if combined with a
99.999+% black paint job. Of course, if it means your ship costs 10X
as much, it might be more useful just to buy the extra ships. Make your tech
assumptions, and design your universe. If you don't like it, change the parts
that don't fit. Hours of fun (someday I should put my collection of universes
up on my web site, except that I'm not sure if I could afford the space).

> On Fri, 10 Aug 2001, Izenberg, Noam wrote:

> >From Ryan Gill:

Because well-painted camo looks pretty cool? :>

I just finished painting a 15mm Infantry Walker in Martian camo - red
oxides & black - and that looks very cool, if I may be allowed a moment
of immodesty... (Pictures 'real soon now...')

> Just wondering

<tongue in cheek> As someone else pointed out, would bright red vehicles
covered in skull
motifs & with a name like the 'Slugga-Blasta-Xploda' be an improvement?
</cheek>

> (Vac-head) Noam

No, but I try - I've got a BDN on the paint stand right now that's in
WW2-style disruption/dazzle black/grey/white. Yes, I know the rationale
for camo'd starships is pretty thin; I've been following the FT sensor
arguements for the last weeks. Dazzle *looks* really good, though.

And heck, if a thousand credits worth of paint protects 100 million credits of
starship even a minute amount, I'd go for it!

Trying to enlighten vacc-heads...

> My entire NSL fleet is painted in a 3 tone gray and black camo