templariomaster wrote:

The thing is that projectrho might make a lot of assumptions, like they're pretty based on tech that at least is theorized or we experimented. But their points aren't technicall but fundamental, they don't say that you can't hide all your heat because we don't have the technology to refrigerate all the heat, they say that all systems generate heat somewhere and that heat contrasts so much in the background of the universe that you can see it from light years where you are.

With a metamaterial cloak, all the heat you generate is directed in a direction you choose. It's all there, but none of it is interacting with the target's sensors. Metamaterials don't interact with light in the same way that conventional materials do, and allow for really novel and unique optical effects. We also know that Eclipse Phase has very good metamaterial cloaking which hides everything from the microwave to ultraviolet parts of the EM spectrum.

templariomaster wrote:

And if we take the "its future tech, Im sure they solved it!" nope, first if you take this way then you shouldn't be worrying since all you do is avoid all explanation shielding in the "future tech" idea, so just find a slighly plausible way and apply technicall correctness is only a nice detail not the base for a story. Second, technological advancement also applies to new techniques in sensors and data processing making your point useless.

Its future tech, which did solve the heat problem of spacecraft stealth. It didn't solve RADAR detection or high energy backscatter, which need to be dealt with separately, but its unclear if EP tech can detect ships with passive versions of those sensors, and at what range they could be used. That would defeat an EP metamaterial cloak though.

templariomaster wrote:

I repeat, the problem here is fundamental, only a 100% optimized system without heat generation or perfect heat transmission can solve this, anything else is losing you time. And there are more ways, if the problem is fundamental any ship or space station will need at some point more energy or materials that will have to be sent physically. Even completly virtualized stations without organic morphs will need spare parts and they're too far to any asteroid to mine it or they don't have all the resources they need in the asteroids surrounding them. Dont understimate the human factor, humans are prone to error and machines are made by humans(yes even AGIs or uplifts) but physics don't make mistakes, so don't attack there.

I don't think anyone is arguing that permanent stealth is possible in EP, but that isn't really necessary for an infiltration mission, something really long term like that is probably best hidden socially rather than physically. With EP style stealth, all the heat isn't being stored or isn't being made, all the heat which might interact with the targets sensors is simply being deflected into empty regions of space.

The problem with some of those fundamental assumptions is we're talking about things based on how things are now. We can sense Voyager a million miles away because we know we put it up there, we know where to look for it, and in terms of close objects, it's one of a relatively small number things out that far doing stuff like that, being tracked from probably one centralized network of people. In EP, these things are no longer true. There are far, far more heat signatures going too and fro all day, everyday. Any time physical matter needs to be moved or obtained, there is a ship to haul it or a drone to bring it in. Every habitat is surrounded by all kinds of heat and other active emissions at all times. Especially given how many groups in EP do not like to build big, centralized data analysis rigs (for reasons), it is unlikely that most people have the time or effort to spend tracking every little thing they can see. And while sure, the system is filled with people at every angle, those people do not always talk. Do you think Locus cares if they see some kind of heat bloom from a shielded radiator heading toward Jove or Mars? Nope, those guys aren't gonna say shit. The only people who would really try and make a dedicated tracking of all Solar System traffic are the Argonauts, and there are plenty of groups who won't listen to them. Now, this is still basically social or logistical, not necessarily physical, but the physics does not itself affect those social or logistical aspects. It's like the phrase about a tree falling in a forest. Technically, the tree probably makes a sound, but if nobody's paying attention to it it might as well not be. If you can abstract, misdirect or alter the physical signifier, the fact that it does still exist somewhere can be made meaningless. I mean, modern stealth aircraft do nothing against the old mk 1 eyeball, but if nobody knows to put their eye out to look for it that doesn't matter.

Even near highly congested habitats, I would expect everything to be tracked. That's just basic traffic control. Yes, there are tons of vehicles moving around airports, but just try flying over one or walking on the air strip without authorization and see if they notice. I think jKaiser has the best explanation. The secret isn't to try and hide your ship; it's to digitally exploit the target beforehand so when your ship comes in, you can make sure the habitat's systems don't flag you.

templariomaster wrote:

I already answered that, you have a solar system connected and everybody have sensors. Anyheat you move will be detected and this method still depends on a first burn with a lot of wating in the way, are you telling me that no one will detect your ship even a little in months of travel? Im not arguing about the radar occultation but the fact that even the most optimized machines will emit heat and that heat can be detected in space which is so huge that doing that is like hiding a light buld by putting your hand in front of it.

You can direct your heat out of phase with the planets and evade most of the sensors. Assuming some comet-miner or LP out in the (very near) Oort cloud sees you (which it probably can) that still gives you a ~3 week period of invisibility before your target can know where you are. Not enough time to move between planets, but enough time for some translunar excitement. I'm not terribly worried about machines leaking heat, because that metamaterial cloak doesn't appear to draw power, and will hide the rest of the ship pretty much perfectly. The time-of stealth can probably be extended by ghosting along near another heat source to try to make sensors fumble, and a host of tricks and counter-tricks which haven't been thought up a yet. It's also possible that the ship would be conventionally invisible at this range (1800 AU is pretty far) but between the better sensors of EP, and the more focussed nature of the emissions I think its plausible that a sensor could pick it up. Of course, if there are sensor platforms closer in, that would reduce the stealth time unless they were subverted somehow, but its not clear if there are.

templariomaster wrote:

The problem in space stealth is the presence of your ship in the middle of nowhere, not the tech itself. He haven't talked optical dection yet even if it seems so low tech we're in the solar system with a sun emiting radiation everywhere, and that radiation is something that you will have to deflect or redirect making the problem of internal heat even worse with such stealth systems.

The deflected radiation is mostly your internal heat, and a metamaterial cloak also makes the ship invisible to all EM radiation from microwave to ultraviolet, so optical detection isn't a worry. That kind of invisibility cloak breaks a lot of classical optical laws, so external radiation does not interact with the ship, instead going on a snell's law violating roundabout and continuing on its way as if the ship didn't exist. This can be mimicked on the interior to point emissions in controlled directions.

templariomaster wrote:

Reflecting all the heat perfectly while maintaining the surface aiming to our supersecret station is work, and work always generate heat. The problem is there and it will always be there since its so fundamental, we can't create a 100% efficient machine and even if you do, the timeframe we're using is months... with luck, in those months can happen a lot of things that compromise the stealthiness of the mission, since all the heat is emitted in a cone in somewhere and space is huge someone somewhere will say that there is a strange object emitting heat moving in a slow,strange and predictible direction to nowhere will certainly raise suspictions. Even the idea of a heat laser will require a perfect efficiency of 100% or you will have to deal with the heat of your own heat emissors to avoid that heat going in a cone and revealing your possition. And a efficiency of 100% is also beyond transhuman tech, maybe posthuman... such tech can't be understood in all his consequences.

I'm mostly just arguing for the functionality of the stealth pod in Firewall for a minimum, which has a mission time between 10 and 100 hours, and seeing how far that can be extended. I am kind of confused as to why your saying that space being huge makes it harder to hide, as it should open up more of the sky as an empty place to shine the heat where no-one will see it for a long time. The invisibility isn't created by a heat laser, its done through a metamaterial cloak (the same tech that powers the personal scale Invisibility Cloak from the EP core) which evades almost all of the limitations of a heat laser by virtue of the material's unique relationship to light. I mean, metamaterials can also mimic the effects of black hole levels of gravity, and accurately model the paths photons take through stars, they're really weird, and the ones in EP are really, really powerful. This kind of stealth basically hinges on the existence of perfect or near perfect broad-spectrum negative refractive index materials which don't draw power, or are capable of perfectly hiding their power draw, which may not actually be possible IRL, or may just be incompletely explained in the EP rules, and have limitations which aren't written down which make this cloak less ideal than it seems. As it stands, I think that stealth for space craft which aren't using any kind of engine which releases hot or easily noticed gas and is designed from the keel up for stealth can probably maintain stealth for a month or two at best, but that might not be possible if the metamaterials in EP are less amazing than they seem. (This could be a special morph, but probably not a special suit) You're correct that most stealth missions are probably keep as short as they can be, because what can go wrong will.

UnitOmega wrote:

Snip large numbers of heat signatures/snip

I'd be a little surprised if all ships larger than a rocket sled weren't being tracked by someone, or multiple someones, and quite surprised if everything larger than a LLOTV wasn't being tracked. Eclipse Phase ships are pretty much WMDs if they get out of control, so traffic control is probably strict. A ship crashing at 3 KM/s relative velocity hits as hard as its weight in TNT, which would be exceedingly bad for most habs, seeing as most transports will be hitting like small nuclear weapons at that speed. That said, its probably really easy to hide in space traffic in or around a shipyard/dock/busy orbit, as that's probably too busy and too fast moving to track. That kind of really short range social stealth is probably really easy. One thing I do wonder about is the stealth capabilities of a swarmanoid in space, I'm not sure how well that could hide out.

It's not so much a tree falling in a desert, but a tree falling in a forest of falling trees, which is what I was getting at. It was mentioned earlier a modern air traffic radar can pick up bird-sized objects, but we tend to have computers filter that out. In your immediate area as a hab, you'll be saturated with IR/RADAR/LIDAR and all kinds of detection. But there's probably too much stuff going on for your systems to summon enough care to pay attention to every single thing. In essence I'm kind of trying to bridge the gap between our ideas of hard technological stealth and social engineering stealth. I'm sure everyone in the system can see and probably logs every thing of relative significance going on in the Solar System, barring possible physical obstructions. But you and your computers only care about stuff which is relevant to you. There's probably even real time analysis going on, never mind minutes. But since you're being constantly bombarded with information, the system is going to have to select what it handles. While some open habs (Like a lot of Autonomists) may have dedicated teams of space nerds who love to watch that actively, in general I would think cramming and organizing a view of the entire sky, probably in 360, would be more than a transhuman can handle at once. So you'd filter by relevance. I mean, bringing it back to the human element, who on Saturn or Jupiter really cares that there's another cargo hauler going between venus and luna or luna and Mars? Now, if one of those cargo haulers does something weird, like shoot off a heat signature on an intercept vector to the Saturnian system, that might be a flag, though with large system bodies like Jove or Saturn, probably one of intermediate level. But now into misdirection. You use something like one of those Covert Pods (though that would probably need to be closer ranged), a stealthed morph with cold gas jets or some kind of obfuscated radiator or shroud, you can make that weird, notable event look like something else. Maybe it doesn't pass the algorithm, or when under human review they decided to flag it low. Or they see something way smaller than it actually is. They're still tracking you, but to them, they're tracking something else. A random hunk of space junk that'll come into a near-intercept range in a few days or weeks. Then when you're actually close enough to matter, you can alter things to actually make an infiltration intercept. Or you've paid off the tech running the telescope to ignore you. Or you just rush the QB, the covert pod actually straight up admits anybody actually looking will notice it's deceleration burn. The point is that it'll be too close to stop you. Now sure, space traffic control might be "interesting", but it's not hugs and kisses just because everybody has the same job. There are people who would pay to see a high speed mass impact with Extropia or Mars. They might track who sent it so later so they can point fingers and shift blame, but I'm sure there are groups who wouldn't lift a finger to tell other polities something was up if they didn't already know. Given how EP is described, it's really naive to say that all people would magically cooperate over the subject of space traffic. But it's a fringe point anyway. jkaiser basically covered most of the salient arguments. The real weakness is that a system is manned by people who have to observe it and interpret it. And there are things you can do to hit that weakness from your end and the local end.

UnitOmega wrote:

It's not so much a tree falling in a desert, but a tree falling in a forest of falling trees, which is what I was getting at. It was mentioned earlier a modern air traffic radar can pick up bird-sized objects, but we tend to have computers filter that out. In your immediate area as a hab, you'll be saturated with IR/RADAR/LIDAR and all kinds of detection. But there's probably too much stuff going on for your systems to summon enough care to pay attention to every single thing. In essence I'm kind of trying to bridge the gap between our ideas of hard technological stealth and social engineering stealth. I'm sure everyone in the system can see and probably logs every thing of relative significance going on in the Solar System, barring possible physical obstructions. But you and your computers only care about stuff which is relevant to you. There's probably even real time analysis going on, never mind minutes. But since you're being constantly bombarded with information, the system is going to have to select what it handles. While some open habs (Like a lot of Autonomists) may have dedicated teams of space nerds who love to watch that actively, in general I would think cramming and organizing a view of the entire sky, probably in 360, would be more than a transhuman can handle at once. So you'd filter by relevance. I mean, bringing it back to the human element, who on Saturn or Jupiter really cares that there's another cargo hauler going between venus and luna or luna and Mars? Now, if one of those cargo haulers does something weird, like shoot off a heat signature on an intercept vector to the Saturnian system, that might be a flag, though with large system bodies like Jove or Saturn, probably one of intermediate level. But now into misdirection. You use something like one of those Covert Pods (though that would probably need to be closer ranged), a stealthed morph with cold gas jets or some kind of obfuscated radiator or shroud, you can make that weird, notable event look like something else. Maybe it doesn't pass the algorithm, or when under human review they decided to flag it low. Or they see something way smaller than it actually is. They're still tracking you, but to them, they're tracking something else. A random hunk of space junk that'll come into a near-intercept range in a few days or weeks. Then when you're actually close enough to matter, you can alter things to actually make an infiltration intercept. Or you've paid off the tech running the telescope to ignore you. Or you just rush the QB, the covert pod actually straight up admits anybody actually looking will notice it's deceleration burn. The point is that it'll be too close to stop you. Now sure, space traffic control might be "interesting", but it's not hugs and kisses just because everybody has the same job. There are people who would pay to see a high speed mass impact with Extropia or Mars. They might track who sent it so later so they can point fingers and shift blame, but I'm sure there are groups who wouldn't lift a finger to tell other polities something was up if they didn't already know. Given how EP is described, it's really naive to say that all people would magically cooperate over the subject of space traffic. But it's a fringe point anyway. jkaiser basically covered most of the salient arguments. The real weakness is that a system is manned by people who have to observe it and interpret it. And there are things you can do to hit that weakness from your end and the local end.

Given the computational power available in EP, I don't really see any of those problems being actual problems. Sure, you might be able to trick a system into thinking you're something you're not, but that only works as long as you don't do anything interesting - like come anywhere near secret-space-station-XXX1. Anything registering as 'boring space junk' that comes close enough to be a threat would get tagged as 'boring space junk that might possibly be a stealthed ship/morph trying to sneak up on us'. At which point it will receive a lot more attention. Basically, as others have said, I think you can't really sneak up on a habitat or ship from any kind of distance unless you've got some way of messing with their sensors from the inside (virus/inside man). And that's just not a good idea - would you like to embark on a three-month intercept trip to a hostile station while relying on a computer virus that you're hoping they won't discover in the meantime? If they realise what happened (say) two months and three weeks into your trip, the first you'll know about it is when their missiles slam into you...

I've done some work on an engineered fabric that embeds the capacity for electromagnetic (in)visibility in a textile. The research was also concerned with shifting the perception that only human beings have agency within responsive systems. The provocation was a shelter or hiding place for inhabitants in the event of an existential threat. We ran some tests on Wendover Air Base, Utah in 2013. One of the most interesting things that came out of it was it is more effective to understand the threshold of signal to noise in any sensor system and to make the thing you don't want seen appear as noise. It is easier to be ignored than to hide. Its a fine distinction. Anomalies are interesting, glitches are boring.

rootoftwo wrote:

I've done some work on an engineered fabric that embeds the capacity for electromagnetic (in)visibility in a textile. The research was also concerned with shifting the perception that only human beings have agency within responsive systems. The provocation was a shelter or hiding place for inhabitants in the event of an existential threat. We ran some tests on Wendover Air Base, Utah in 2013. One of the most interesting things that came out of it was it is more effective to understand the threshold of signal to noise in any sensor system and to make the thing you don't want seen appear as noise. It is easier to be ignored than to hide. Its a fine distinction. Anomalies are interesting, glitches are boring.

Sort of the Moscow Rules in space, yeah. Especially "Maintain a natural pace. Lull them into a sense of complacency. Build in opportunity, but use it sparingly." That said, the sheer time investment alone is a massive factor. About the only place I could see this having a decent chance is in a planetary orbit or the Belt, the Trojans or Greeks (from within their own space, mind, not from one to the other), and in the former case, that basically means Earth-Luna or maybe Mars orbit, if the solar system in your game's been kinda slow to salvage nondangerous wrecks. And considering the sheer bloat of infugees and demand for bodies...well, it's not too hard to see why no one's in too much of a hurry to explore the wrecks without obvious material benefit, depending on what onus on stack retrieval/resleeve any salvage rights agreements have, there's probably a lot of debris in major planetary orbits you could use as a plausible cover. But that still requires something to cause your cover to be practical. If you're extremely lucky, pouring over the charts might reveal one or two hunks of metal or rock that get reasonably close to your target, which would be your best bet to get close (though you still have to hide your approach to that object -- in a planetary orbit, at least, you can hide behind the planet itself, hopefully.) Of course...those same orbits have debris fields for a reason, and not a few guns ready and willing to turn you into a lightshow if you come within a few kilometers on anything resembling an intercept trajectory. Which, to me, leaves the Belt, which has the benefit of being busy. It might not hide your signal, but if you have to carry a strobe light, better to carry it in Space!Las Vegas. The Trojans and Greeks have the added benefit of having unstable orbits, but again, this is measured in terms of years, even decades, and you have a lot of interested parties keeping an eye on those rocks. The Belt on the other hand has the pre-set background of (admittedly very, very spaced-out) rocks and a lot of factions all rubbing elbows, keeping secrets, and -- and this is probably the best scenario for this op, since it's unlikely to happen in a figurative vacuum -- engaging in all kinds of shadow wars and, well, open conflict. Any kind of Sol-whatever orbits...well, I'm not one to say something can't work, but that's comparatively empty space and a much, much longer time commitment, to say nothing of the delta-V you'd need to burn to set up an intersecting orbit. You're not fooling anyone if you have to burn reaction mass for half an hour to set up your orbit to come within a thousand kilometers six months from now.