It sure seems like that heat thing could be solved for short bursts...just letting it buildup within the ship for awhile and then shutting it down. That would be a pretty serious tactical advantage on a combat ship even if you couldn't fly around with it on all the time like the Klingons. Sounds like that is what they do in Mass Effect.
Bring a super cooled material to absorb heat. Rather than venting excess heat, the heat would be fed to the super cooled material. Depending on how much heat this material can absorb, you could stay thermally cloaked for a few minutes or a few hours. To recharge the super cooled material, just let it cool off in the dead cold of space.
At one time we thought radar cloaking was retarded. Then we actually did it. Stealth bombers do not reflect the waves used for conventional radar.
Liquid helium would circulate along the shell of the ship to keep the temperature near 0. The inside of the ship would be insulated with a vacuum, like a thermos bottle.
Not really a mistake, but I always found it weird how movies show high school students driving to school. Where I live, nobody drives to school because there's nowhere to park. The school has enough parking for the staff and that is it. Parking on the streets in front of schools is almost never allowed (here) and even then that would only be maybe 10 cars worth of space.
Not really a mistake, but I always found it weird how movies show high school students driving to school. Where I live, nobody drives to school because there's nowhere to park. The school has enough parking for the staff and that is it. Parking on the streets in front of schools is almost never allowed (here) and even then that would only be maybe 10 cars worth of space.
mine too, though I didn't drive until my Junior year, since I didn't have my drivers license until summer school after my sophmore year (not enough drivers ed classes for the volume of students, so a good number who turned 16 in the spring had to wait for summer. That was OK though, since I didn't have a job until I was 16, and couldn't afford to buy a car until I had worked for a little while...)My high school had a huge parking lot.
The heat sink method doesn't work for several reasons. First of all, there is no material known that can hold the amount of heat we're talking about, but of course there could be future materials that can hold the absurd amount of heat we're talking about.
Space ships have the engines off 99% of the time. The Voyager probe is still keeping it real and traveling through the solar system even though that thing is several decades old.Going on what Tenshodo said, even if you DID manage to have your hull at background temps, what about your propulsion? Unless you have a few years on your hands or use some non-energy expending form of propulsion, your engines are going to be detected.
On the wormhole point, I'm trying to stay away from science fiction, because atm, there is no evidence that WH exists.
Moving from movies to TV shows, I always find it amusing that even in a crowded bar/restaurant/coffee shop, the main characters always manage to find a table that sits ~5 people without any wait.
I'm going to try answering these point by point...
I haven't read through all 6 pages of this thread, but here are a few:
From Star Trek: "Hull integrity is down to 11%!" or even "The hull is buckling!" If the hull were actually buckling, you'd think the ship would actually be affected in some way, but it never is.
In movies, tires always squeal no matter what kind of car it is, who's driving, or whether the driver actually floors it. This is especially true in 70s movies (Dirty Harry is a good example).
Point by point, eh? What about where I said that they could sink it into another dimension? I we are dealing with antimatter or zero-point energy propulsion, folding space, and FTL travel, why not?
I think Gravity is abused the most in movies.
Spaceships that have apparent 1g internal gravity without any viable means of generation...
One of the only "space" movies that really took gravity seriously has been 2001.
But the ship IS being affected! There are consoles exploding in sparks everywhere and sometimes if it's really bad a beam will fall and there will be tubes dangling from the ceiling as well. And lots of smoke machines running.
I think star trek deep space 9 said the gravity was the result of the outer ring spinning. That's actually a pretty reasonable explanation.
You can try this at home. Put a pool ball in a sock and swing it around. It appears to have gravity in an upward direction because of centripetal force
How did they dock in the show? I thought it docked in the middle section, but I can't remember because that show ended like a decade ago.Ten the exterior would be "down" and the shuttles would dock completely differently for walk-offs.
Air conditioners are remarkably inefficient. While it's pulling 1400W from the wall, it's really only removing maybe 700W of heat from the building. So that's 3 adults and the amount of energy from the sun soaking through the whole building and it's only 700W. You know what else provides 700W of cooling? A small piece of dry ice subliming on your kitchen counter.Also, your AC example is a little retarded because the AC creates a bigger heat signature than it counters. Even with 100% efficiency, it would be equal, so it's retarded either way. And since when has cooling to the Earth's surface temp ever been equal to cooling to match the background heat in space? Silly.
The idea would be interesting if it an absolutely ludicrous amount of heat wasn't being generated. Again, even a crew being alive is already generating a tremendous amount of heat compared to the 3 degrees of space
The ME ship is too small to be holding any sort of heat sink. Also that engine description makes no sense as it is shown using standard drives anyway, with light effects and everything. Anyway, the design of the Normandy would make no sense as it can go through reentry. Which means that it is insulated from heat from the outside, which means that if the outside is heated then it simply absorbs the energy and prevents it from reaching the inside of the ship. Which means the cooling system might have trouble reaching heat that doesn't penetrate the outermost hull which means that it still functions as a torch in space
Also, if it works by manipulating gravity essentially as the description shows, it's a major red flag. Distortions due to gravity is pretty easy to detect.
Also, if the heatsink really DOES get that hot, how do you store something like that. How do you keep forcing that much heat into something that is already incredibly hot. That would even require MORE energy which then creates more heat etc etc.
I think star trek deep space 9 said the gravity was the result of the outer ring spinning. That's actually a pretty reasonable explanation.
You can try this at home. Put a pool ball in a sock and swing it around. It appears to have gravity in an upward direction because of centripetal force
That's why I say sci-fi is basically magic but covered up with technobabble. Even magic has internally consistent rules that must be obeyed in-universe, until of course the writers pull the "it's magic you can do anything!" card.
In Star Trek or any other sci-fi that isn't super hardcore, they just explain everything away by coming up with some tech-speak. As opposed to saying "it's magic" or "it was the will of The Force."
So in the discussion (that you initiated) on how Sci-Fi movies portrays the Sci-Fi concepts of space travel and space warfare using futuristic space ships, you want to stay away from Sci-Fi concepts like wormholes?
Gotcha..
Space ships use a surprisingly small amount of energy. The international space station and satellites are solar powered. Humans don't generate much heat either. The amount of cold required to balance the heat generated by the computers and human metabolism would be very small.
Space ships have the engines off 99% of the time. The Voyager probe is still keeping it real and traveling through the solar system even though that thing is several decades old.
Think of it like this. The entire top floor of my house uses a 1400W air conditioner in summer. 1400W is all it takes to soak up the energy from 3 fully grown humans as well as removing all of the energy coming from the sun.
Point by point, eh? What about where I said that they could sink it into another dimension? I we are dealing with antimatter or zero-point energy propulsion, folding space, and FTL travel, why not? And discounting wormholes in fiction with FTL travel is similarly silly.
How long to you have to be "sneaking"? While you're accelerating, you're probably going to be near impossible to hide. But, at least according to Newton, things in motion tend to stay in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force. Simply get up to speed, cool your hull while exhausting excess heat. And, while cruising at a constant velocity toward your target, simply rely on a cold sink inside the ship to prevent minor miscellaneous heat from escaping. This method would simply require having the intelligence gathered of where your opponent was located.
You would essentially have to start sneaking as soon as you started traveling (Unless the journey took so long that the heat radiation you emit from the initial thrust stops registering on passive scanners at your destination) Thermal Radiation travels at c so you would have to be traveling faster than c to not be detected before you reach your destination. You would have to keep doing this for the entire duration of the journey as you can't let any thermal radiation to escape.
Meanwhile your enemy, with a couple of probes easily laid out in space, passively scanning all of surround space will be able to detect the flash of thermal energy from you trying to vent heat.