Topic Actions

Topic Search

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 48 guests

How does the MA stealth work really?

Join us in talking discussing all things Honor, including (but not limited to) tactics, favorite characters, and book discussions.
Re: How does the MA stealth work really?
Post by kzt   » Thu Feb 12, 2015 12:20 am

kzt
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 11360
Joined: Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:18 pm
Location: Albuquerque, NM

How does any stealth in the Honorverse work? Remember that these are ships with exawatt scale fusion reactors, running at hundreds of million of degrees.

it works because David Weber says it works. Don't try to look too closely at it past that.
Top
Re: How does the MA stealth work really?
Post by SharkHunter   » Thu Feb 12, 2015 3:44 am

SharkHunter
Vice Admiral

Posts: 1608
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:53 pm
Location: Independence, Missouri

captinjoehenry wrote:or should i just pick up my physics cards and go home because the ships are somehow able to just say i do not care about thermodynamics and they have no need to radiate their waste heat. I ask this seriously as if that is the case which would really be the only reason i can think of that would cause the system i am suggesting not to work i would love to know so i do not bring it up again.
There's a bit of what we call "handwavium" in the Honorverse, that makes it work, the big two being "fusion reactors that work" and "gravitic drives". There are others (wormhole junctions and hyperspace) but without those, there's not really any form of space combat that doesn't require centuries to arrange, a la Ender's game. In theory, my guess is that most of what we'd think would be the "thermodynamic" energy release is part of the wedge's energy. Keeping in mind that deep space is really really cold in the absence of a "capturing body", I'd imagine that with the little bits of textev about stealth fields redirecting the heat away from known sensors is also why Honor felt like she could pull the trick she did at Cerebus; without our knowing the specifics, the senior officers (say commanders on up) in the story would always know their "heat radiant vs. stealth feed detection parameters and that at close to 600K km, they were approaching threshold values for "Peep sensors".
---------------------
All my posts are YMMV, IMHO, and welcoming polite discussion, extension, and rebuttal. This is the HonorVerse, after all
Top
Re: How does the MA stealth work really?
Post by kzt   » Thu Feb 12, 2015 4:43 am

kzt
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 11360
Joined: Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:18 pm
Location: Albuquerque, NM

Even the whole wedge radiating heat into hyper falls apart. For example, BoM. The reactor on a Mk23 cannot be shut down, so while the tens of thousands of missiles are running ballistically towards 5th fleet their still operating fusion reactor is heating them up all nice and toasty.

Also, you see this with the stealthy RMN recon drones. Again they can't restart their reactor - that requires a bunch of power from the launching ship. They are described as cruising through a system with the wedge down so they can't be detected by gravitics. Well, once you drop the wedge you can't mystically radiate your heat to hyperspace, so the ultra stealthy drone is going to be stealthily glowing white hot, like a tiny star, after a little while.

So don't worry about this too much.
Top
Re: How does the MA stealth work really?
Post by Annachie   » Thu Feb 12, 2015 6:23 am

Annachie
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 3099
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 7:36 pm

Couple of other things to mention that would effect the heat problem.

Cold Fusion and room temperature super conductiors.

If we presume that they are possible in the Honorverse, and we might as well, then the heat generation problem changes by orders of magnitude.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You are so going to die. :p ~~~~ runsforcelery
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
still not dead. :)
Top
Re: How does the MA stealth work really?
Post by cthia   » Thu Feb 12, 2015 7:59 am

cthia
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

SharkHunter wrote:
captinjoehenry wrote:or should i just pick up my physics cards and go home because the ships are somehow able to just say i do not care about thermodynamics and they have no need to radiate their waste heat. I ask this seriously as if that is the case which would really be the only reason i can think of that would cause the system i am suggesting not to work i would love to know so i do not bring it up again.
There's a bit of what we call "handwavium" in the Honorverse, that makes it work, the big two being "fusion reactors that work" and "gravitic drives". There are others (wormhole junctions and hyperspace) but without those, there's not really any form of space combat that doesn't require centuries to arrange, a la Ender's game. In theory, my guess is that most of what we'd think would be the "thermodynamic" energy release is part of the wedge's energy. Keeping in mind that deep space is really really cold in the absence of a "capturing body", I'd imagine that with the little bits of textev about stealth fields redirecting the heat away from known sensors is also why Honor felt like she could pull the trick she did at Cerebus; without our knowing the specifics, the senior officers (say commanders on up) in the story would always know their "heat radiant vs. stealth feed detection parameters and that at close to 600K km, they were approaching threshold values for "Peep sensors".

I wouldn't be so quick to claim handwavium of stealth units on heat dissipation problems alone.

Remember, this is advanced Honorverse technology using advanced natural and manmade materials.

Whatif an advanced HVAC system is at the heart of it all, drawing heat from the surrounding systems and converting that heat into the temperature of surrounding space before expelling/ejecting.

I'm just supplying a possible theory here, not specifics of available materials or processes.

Yes, I'm aware of thermodynamics and the ambient temperature of space. NO engineering graduate isn't!

What I'm not aware of, are the properties of extrasolar materials and extrasolar methods made possible utilizing these materials from other than uninspired minds (us) relegated to small back yard thinking in "our neck of the woods."

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
Top
Re: How does the MA stealth work really?
Post by BobfromSydney   » Thu Feb 12, 2015 8:41 am

BobfromSydney
Commander

Posts: 226
Joined: Sun Mar 24, 2013 10:32 pm

captinjoehenry wrote:Ok i know that they have this wonderful video cam / video screen tech but that won't help didly versus an active sensor as the screen and cam will both reflect the laser or radar wave just fine and then there is the question of its heat radiators because even if it were to radiate in only a 60 degree cone you would only need a dozen sensor platforms to make any direction unsafe so if you can deploy a large sphere of sensor platforms that are themselves stealthy (somehow) then there is no real way that the MA ship will know which way it is safe to radiate and then if your sensor drone gets into the ships radiator beam you should be easily able to detect the ship even at massive range due to the temp that the radiator would need to be active at.

Now for ships other than the MA how do they deal with the waste heat their system generate because it really is not that hard at all to detect something that has something that is heat intensive like a fusion or fission reactor powering it so how exactly are any of the ships in the honorvers able to hide in stealth when they have to deal with their waste heat or do they really just rely on knowing where every enemy sensor is so they know what direction it is safe to radiate in? because otherwise the best way to find any ship that is in stealth and has life support or a reactor on is to simply make a large dense sphere of sensor platforms that are just infrared sensors and a transmitter and that should easily allow you to detect any ship in the whole series.

or should i just pick up my physics cards and go home because the ships are somehow able to just say i do not care about thermodynamics and they have no need to radiate their waste heat. I ask this seriously as if that is the case which would really be the only reason i can think of that would cause the system i am suggesting not to work i would love to know so i do not bring it up again.


If I've got my maths right you would need a minimum of 15 (likely quite a few more, due to 'tiling' inefficiencies and overlap) sensors spaced equidistantly around the 'target' in order to guarantee detection of a target radiating infrared in a 60 degree cone. This is based on comparing the surface area of a sphere with the surface area of the 'dome cap' of the cone.

The idea is that any sensor/probe within the area of the radiating cone would detect emissions and theoretically find a precise vector when they are coming from.
Top
Re: How does the MA stealth work really?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:30 pm

Jonathan_S
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 8797
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:01 pm
Location: Virginia, USA

captinjoehenry wrote:
tonyz wrote:Well, yes, but we've all tacitly agreed that there must be some near-magical way to deal with most waste heat that doesn't involve radiating it, because otherwise all Honorverse ships would vaporize themselves very rapidly just by turning their drives on.

(At least Weber is aware of the waste heat issue...)


oh thats great and never mind this whole thread but if you could point me to anything from DW that shows he is aware of this i would appreciate it.

It's not in writing, but one of the panels at the most recent Honorcon spent a little time on the waste heat issue.

(Paraphrasing) Apparently impeller drive ships can "cheat" and radiate heat through their wedges. So they only have to deal with normal radiator and heat sinks when they're moving ballistically with their wedges down. (But that's mostly just a fancy way of saying it works because the author says it does)

And kzt already pointed out a number of scenarios this doesn't cover.


And even then how that might apply to spider ships was not (to the best of my recollection) discussed.
Top
Re: How does the MA stealth work really?
Post by kzt   » Thu Feb 12, 2015 2:36 pm

kzt
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 11360
Joined: Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:18 pm
Location: Albuquerque, NM

Someone from Bu9 (can't remember who) mentioned there was a list of Honorverse topics that they have decided are not going to be explained in a convincing way that relies on science. Stealth was the top of the list. I don't remember if they mentioned a second.

Essentially the problem is that the universe background is about 4 Kelvin and people live at about 300K and fusion reactors run at millionsK. Even without a reactor running, a ship is a big object that will radiate in the IR, and IR is detectable over enormous distances against a background of near black. If the reactor is running portions of the ship are going to be glowing (as in emitting visible light) to dump heat and the entire ship will be pretty toasty.
Top
Re: How does the MA stealth work really?
Post by captinjoehenry   » Thu Feb 12, 2015 3:01 pm

captinjoehenry
Lieutenant Commander

Posts: 147
Joined: Tue Feb 10, 2015 9:36 pm

kzt wrote:Someone from Bu9 (can't remember who) mentioned there was a list of Honorverse topics that they have decided are not going to be explained in a convincing way that relies on science. Stealth was the top of the list. I don't remember if they mentioned a second.

Essentially the problem is that the universe background is about 4 Kelvin and people live at about 300K and fusion reactors run at millionsK. Even without a reactor running, a ship is a big object that will radiate in the IR, and IR is detectable over enormous distances against a background of near black. If the reactor is running portions of the ship are going to be glowing (as in emitting visible light) to dump heat and the entire ship will be pretty toasty.


Yep that is exactly what I was talking about and thanks for telling me that this subject is delt with by some sort of future stealth tech o the future and now I guess this discussion is now more or less over in regard to this series.
Top

Return to Honorverse