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Old 07-14-2008, 07:05 PM   #20
safisher
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Default Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships

Quote:
Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk
I'm sure there will be a lot of research into making things harder to see, but the typical star trek-esque cloaking fields that come to mind when people start mentioning stealth in space(to me, at least) generally seem(again, to me) to be handwaving the First Law, which you just can't do.
I don't doubt this. The finer issue, really, is whether some material/ship design will prevent you from detecting the energy.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0529190038.htm
"This metamaterial has been engineered to ensure that all light is neither reflected nor transmitted, but is turned completely into heat and absorbed. It shows we can design a metamaterial so that at a specific frequency it can absorb all of the photons that fall onto its surface."

Seems that the power requirements of ships could be kept very small if light hitting it were converted into heat. Other articles mention how the materials can be tunable within a range of frequencies. This is at the infancy of the study of the materials, so, it seems safe to say that we don't fully understand exactly what the outcome is going to be.

Some of the real world designs place an umbrella like device between the spacecraft and the enemy, which greatly reduces the likelihood of detection. it's no cloaking device, but is could (possibly) show what futuristic hard science spacecraft will look like -- umbrella shields with metamaterials for many, many purposes (including lenses for sensors and weapons, and for stealth). Perhaps a such giant shield would serve all three purposes.
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