Heat Disposal on ships

MaxxQ wrote:SNIP...

You can take it or leave it as an explanation, but I will say that I haven't seen anyone here doing the complaining write a completely physics-accurate, but also entertaining science-fiction book.

Hehe - I'm also waiting with great interest for these masterworks!

isaac_newton wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:SNIP...

You can take it or leave it as an explanation, but I will say that I haven't seen anyone here doing the complaining write a completely physics-accurate, but also entertaining science-fiction book.

Hehe - I'm also waiting with great interest for these masterworks!

We all love this series, or wouldn't be here reading it, and I for one am deeply impressed by how well the overall future physics holds up. That doesn't mean that we can't discuss what we see as anomalies.
As to the future, I read an article yesterday where you can now get an app to watch your invitro embryo growing on your smart phone. Forty years ago I wouldn't have had a clue as to what that sentence meant.

Daryl wrote:;)

isaac_newton wrote:
Hehe - I'm also waiting with great interest for these masterworks!

We all love this series, or wouldn't be here reading it, and I for one am deeply impressed by how well the overall future physics holds up. That doesn't mean that we can't discuss what we see as anomalies.

That's all well and fine, except that we've heard the S.O.S.* over and over again, ad infinitum. Power cords, economics, glowing in the dark from heat, etc, etc, etc. Come up with something new to whine about.

Or write your own stuff that fixes it. I'll read it, as long as it also entertains me.

*Same Old Sh... excrement.

How about this one, then, which I dont believe has been covered before:

One thing that has bothered me is I dont think the books ever adequately explain how even civilian grade sensor suites can have the sort of inaccuracies that become plot points.

One of the most prominent is Crandall & Cronies dissing the reports of the dispatch boat who recorded Byng's demise.

They diss the ship acceleration rates, the missile ranges and accel, and just about everything. I know the plot point is to showcase SLN arrogance, but HTH can even a weak sensor suite be wrong about something like the accel a ship or missile, or the position/range of a launch? Nowhere else in the books is this sort of inaccuracy demonstrated.

ericth wrote:How about this one, then, which I dont believe has been covered before:

One thing that has bothered me is I dont think the books ever adequately explain how even civilian grade sensor suites can have the sort of inaccuracies that become plot points.

One of the most prominent is Crandall & Cronies dissing the reports of the dispatch boat who recorded Byng's demise.

They diss the ship acceleration rates, the missile ranges and accel, and just about everything. I know the plot point is to showcase SLN arrogance, but HTH can even a weak sensor suite be wrong about something like the accel a ship or missile, or the position/range of a launch? Nowhere else in the books is this sort of inaccuracy demonstrated.

Very true. I think the explanation comes not from any inaccuracies or insufficiencies in the sensor suites but from the grey matter accepting or rejecting the data presented due to preexisting prejudices. And as you correctly state "arrogance."

It's hard to reject or "unlearn" those things you spent a lifetime "knowing" are true in favor of new ideas or data. Human psych 101 - Humans can teach mules stubbornness.

AAMOF, this does get covered, at least by implication, early on, but is then ignored to the point where it's not terribly surprising that it seems to be an inconsistency [in fact, it probably has become one]

To whit: that data was being collected by passive systems, and all the numbers in dispute are directly dependent on your estimate of range, and the only thing a passive sensor can measure directly - the bearing to the target. The accuracy and precision of the bearing are under your control, and the better the sensor suite the better both are going to be. And if +/-10% is all you need to get you to within the ranged of traffic control's active systems so they can tell you where to go, that's probably the level your owners are going to pay to maintain [and if the max practical is +/-2%, then that's the best even the most zealous navy is going to do]. While the calibration of your receivers is your responsibility, that's the _only_ part of the distance estimate you influence unless you have really, really good intelligence and very accurate system maps. To get the distance, you measure the signal strength at your receiver, and then plug in assumptions about the strength of the source and the attenuation along the path [such as the famous 1/r^2 assumption for an isotropic radiator]. And therein lies the rub. Fail to keep your calibration up and you can't get an accurate distance even if the source is telling you how strong it is. Plug in inaccurate guesses about source strength, because you don't know and they aren't going to tell you, and it doesn't matter how good your receiver is. And, of course, anybody reviewing your conclusions can insert his own guess if he decides that yours is giving unreasonable results. Add all that up [in quadrature, of course] and you could well be looking at error bars of 15-20% on civilian sensors and 5% or worse even with the best military equipment.

All of which Himself is quite well aware of, since he's discussed back in the day while explaining why fire-control requires active sensors, but a big deal tends not to be made of it.

As an aside, you can collect accurate range data using passive sensors, but only if you have enough stations arranged correctly with precisely-known baselines between them. And the accuracy is a function of the length of the baselines and the orientation of the formation.

robert132 wrote:

ericth wrote:How about this one, then, which I dont believe has been covered before:

One thing that has bothered me is I dont think the books ever adequately explain how even civilian grade sensor suites can have the sort of inaccuracies that become plot points.

One of the most prominent is Crandall & Cronies dissing the reports of the dispatch boat who recorded Byng's demise.

They diss the ship acceleration rates, the missile ranges and accel, and just about everything. I know the plot point is to showcase SLN arrogance, but HTH can even a weak sensor suite be wrong about something like the accel a ship or missile, or the position/range of a launch? Nowhere else in the books is this sort of inaccuracy demonstrated.

Very true. I think the explanation comes not from any inaccuracies or insufficiencies in the sensor suites but from the grey matter accepting or rejecting the data presented due to preexisting prejudices. And as you correctly state "arrogance."

It's hard to reject or "unlearn" those things you spent a lifetime "knowing" are true in favor of new ideas or data. Human psych 101 - Humans can teach mules stubbornness.

ericth wrote:How about this one, then, which I dont believe has been covered before:

One thing that has bothered me is I dont think the books ever adequately explain how even civilian grade sensor suites can have the sort of inaccuracies that become plot points.

One of the most prominent is Crandall & Cronies dissing the reports of the dispatch boat who recorded Byng's demise.

They diss the ship acceleration rates, the missile ranges and accel, and just about everything. I know the plot point is to showcase SLN arrogance, but HTH can even a weak sensor suite be wrong about something like the accel a ship or missile, or the position/range of a launch? Nowhere else in the books is this sort of inaccuracy demonstrated.

I don't think it's the sensors that are wrong. It's the people interpreting the data reported. IIRC Crandall and her cronies were Battle Fleet and they were sure that the Frontier Fleet people had misread the data or somehow otherwise gotten the info wrong.

robert132 wrote:

ericth wrote:How about this one, then, which I dont believe has been covered before:

One thing that has bothered me is I dont think the books ever adequately explain how even civilian grade sensor suites can have the sort of inaccuracies that become plot points.

One of the most prominent is Crandall & Cronies dissing the reports of the dispatch boat who recorded Byng's demise.

They diss the ship acceleration rates, the missile ranges and accel, and just about everything. I know the plot point is to showcase SLN arrogance, but HTH can even a weak sensor suite be wrong about something like the accel a ship or missile, or the position/range of a launch? Nowhere else in the books is this sort of inaccuracy demonstrated.

Very true. I think the explanation comes not from any inaccuracies or insufficiencies in the sensor suites but from the grey matter accepting or rejecting the data presented due to preexisting prejudices. And as you correctly state "arrogance."

It's hard to reject or "unlearn" those things you spent a lifetime "knowing" are true in favor of new ideas or data. Human psych 101 - Humans can teach mules stubbornness.

Louis R wrote:AAMOF, this does get covered, at least by implication, early on, but is then ignored to the point where it's not terribly surprising that it seems to be an inconsistency [in fact, it probably has become one]

To whit: that data was being collected by passive systems, and all the numbers in dispute are directly dependent on your estimate of range, and the only thing a passive sensor can measure directly - the bearing to the target. The accuracy and precision of the bearing are under your control, and the better the sensor suite the better both are going to be. And if +/-10% is all you need to get you to within the ranged of traffic control's active systems so they can tell you where to go, that's probably the level your owners are going to pay to maintain [and if the max practical is +/-2%, then that's the best even the most zealous navy is going to do]. While the calibration of your receivers is your responsibility, that's the _only_ part of the distance estimate you influence unless you have really, really good intelligence and very accurate system maps. To get the distance, you measure the signal strength at your receiver, and then plug in assumptions about the strength of the source and the attenuation along the path [such as the famous 1/r^2 assumption for an isotropic radiator]. And therein lies the rub. Fail to keep your calibration up and you can't get an accurate distance even if the source is telling you how strong it is. Plug in inaccurate guesses about source strength, because you don't know and they aren't going to tell you, and it doesn't matter how good your receiver is.

But they can get ranges of objects with wedges directly, from gravitic(?) sensors. We've seen people routinely spoofing the strength of the signal and thus the type of ship making it, but not the ship's location. And they can calibrate those sensors every time a ship drops out of hyper, since that has to happen outside the hyper limit.

ericth wrote:How about this one, then, which I dont believe has been covered before:

One thing that has bothered me is I dont think the books ever adequately explain how even civilian grade sensor suites can have the sort of inaccuracies that become plot points.

One of the most prominent is Crandall & Cronies dissing the reports of the dispatch boat who recorded Byng's demise.

They diss the ship acceleration rates, the missile ranges and accel, and just about everything. I know the plot point is to showcase SLN arrogance, but HTH can even a weak sensor suite be wrong about something like the accel a ship or missile, or the position/range of a launch? Nowhere else in the books is this sort of inaccuracy demonstrated.

As others have said, it actually IS the arrogance of those doing the analyzing. After centuries of believing they were top dog, and no one disputing it, OF COURSE they're not going to believe what sensors tell them about range and accel. Easier to blame the equipment than admit that they're NOT the top dog.

Want a real life example of people who are positive about something despite evidence that they are wrong? Look at any YouTube video of a SpaceX launch and/or landing, check the comments section, and tell me how many there state that it's all lies, that the earth is flat, that no rockets ever go into space, that it's all CGI, satellites don't exist, etc.

I'll grant that many are most likely trolls, out to just have some fun, but there are also those who really believe what they say. This is EXACTLY the same mindset that the SLN has to back up their assertions. Like the flat earthers, they have already reached their conclusion, and now they need to fit their evidence to it.

Louis R wrote:All of which Himself is quite well aware of, since he's discussed back in the day while explaining why fire-control requires active sensors, but a big deal tends not to be made of it.

As an aside, you can collect accurate range data using passive sensors, but only if you have enough stations arranged correctly with precisely-known baselines between them. And the accuracy is a function of the length of the baselines and the orientation of the formation.

Yep, this is how radio direction finding (among other things) works. The more direction finding sets you have available at known locations picking up and localizing the direction to the transmitter, and plotting out those lines will give you an area in which the transmitter is located. The more tracking lines you have on that specific signal, the more accurate that location should be, i.e. the smaller the area to be searched becomes.

I forget how old the principle is but I think it predates WWI, going back almost to Mr Marconi.

This should work just as well in tracking grav point sources as it does in tracking an HF radio transmission source. The direction finding receiver in both cases is a passive sensor though the network that allows communications between remote sensors and the network hub might itself be subject interception and each transmitter plotted by "the bad guys."