Thermodynamics does not allow it. All the heat generated running the ship and all that absorbed radiation has to be radiated.
So the ship couldn't have heat sinks to store the heat for later release?
It doesn't have to be stealthed forever, maybe it only needs a few hours.
Mass Effect (the game) covered this concept with the ship Normandy, it was "stealth" in that it stored all heat internally in heat sinks that had to be purged to space every few hours.
Yes, and I can write a paper about the folding of space to create wormholes to allow FTL travel from point to point.
That doesn't mean I can actually build the ship and I would be no less impressed if I saw one in person.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
People simply didn't believe the Wright Brothers when they announced they flew an airplane, they had to take it on tour and demo it over and over before people finally accepted that the age of aviation had arrived.
Humans are slow to adapt to change.
And anyone who has actually seen a big rocket go up would understand they aren't the same thing at all.
I missed the Saturn V launches, but I've watched two shuttles go up, one launch from the closer in viewing stands.
Holy crap that is an experience, the videos do NOT do that justice. The ground shakes, your guts shake, your bones shake, the air shakes. It is a visceral experience that has to be had in person.
Just like the US military in Iraq, right? Or the British, Russian, and now US armies in Afghanistan for the last 150 years? Or both Napoleon and Hitler invading Moscow? While a thousand armored vehicles would flatten any native standing army any interstellar military force has _incredibly_ long supply lines. If transportation and communications are cheap and quick, and the invader's resources large enough, natives can be conquered quickly and thoroughly. But if the supply lines are long, slow, and expensive as we've seen in Terran warfare, we've seen amazing feats of local defenders against invading armies.
If the natives weapons have _any_ effect, home turf advantage and guerrilla warfare are well established and critical factors. One of the critical keys to warfare is the _economics_. Is it worth the resources to commit the invasion justified by the gain? And at interstellar ranges, what does the supply line cost?
I'm not sure if you're trying to be serious, or what... Iraq had modern weapons, they were not some tribe with arrows. Afghanistan was losing until the US intervened and provided them modern weapons.
The technology difference also isn't so vast, maybe a few decades at best. Try centuries...
In addition, the Russians were not trying to exterminate all of Afghanistan, the US wasn't trying to exterminate all of Iraq. Both nations have the ability to do that, we have nuclear weapons. What exactly would either nation have done about that?
Imagine if the aliens have super computers that can write viruses on the fly to invade our networks. Our security should be a joke to them. Or how about directed EMP weapons to simple disable our weapons systems (yes, many of ours are "hardened, but not against alien technology).
Regarding "home turf advantage and guerrilla warfare", what makes you think they have to come down from their ships to hurt us? This illusion of ground combat is put fourth by the movies and video games, but it is stupid. Don't give up the high ground, and space is the ultimate high ground.
Yea, I thought that was pretty cool as well... still, those pictures are taken in low lunar orbit, not from Earth...
You of course miss the point, as so many do.
If I have the ability to travel 500 years back in time, I also have the ability to take GPS satellites with me.
It'd only take 1 civilization to decide to colonize our galaxy. Mathematically, they could have done it in 50 million years without FTL travel. So where are they?
You are looking at it from the viewpoint of your own life and civilization, neither of which are very long lived.
If they show up in 5,000 years, that would be "soon" from their point of view, but "forever" from ours.
You have a very human centric view of the situation, and that isn't unusual, but it does mean you can't see the forest for the trees until you remove your own human biases from the study.
Direct observation.
Wow, you've had direct observation of more than one planet in the "life belt" of a star?
I don't think direct observation means what you think it does. We have a sample size of 1, it is useless for figuring out anything.
All we can go off of is the fact that we keep finding life here on Earth in places we didn't think we'd find it.
So what we consider to be "life supporting environments" keeps changing, even in just the past 10 years.
Yes, but not at any given point in time. At the end point of the universe, sure. Maybe even at some mid point.
Today? I have no idea, I lack enough information to even hazard a guess.
I just know that the universe is very large and we are all very small, humans still have trouble understanding how unimportant we really are.
A one in a billion planet that has a climate which is accommodating to our species?
What makes you think Earth type planets are so rare?
NASA has recently revised their estimates that there are between 3 and 7 million Earth type planets just in our own Galaxy.
There are likely to be tens of thousands of "Earths" full of "people" spread around just the Milky Way Galaxy, to say nothing of the rest of the Universe.
Humans like to think they are so special, it makes them feel important.
You of course make the point clearly enough... Even if they just want water, comets would provide that without needing to invade planets...
What we currenly know about how the universe works basically says it is not possible to excede the speed of light.
It is the hubris of mankind to think that we actually know much about the way the universe works.
That mistake has been made over and over throughout history and the one great truth is that we've been wrong so very many times.
I know that using our current technology, FTL travel is not possible. Your mistake is thinking that we are at some pinnacle of development. You see that we have reached the top of a small hill, maybe 100ft tall, and think we have achieved something great. I see Mt. Everest off in the distance and know we have a long way to go.
BTW, firearms are a bad example of "looks like magic" to somebody 500 years ago. Those automatic weapons haven't changed much in 100 years, and single-shot firearms very similar to what we have today have existed for over 400, with gunpowder-fired projectiles around 800 years old.
I never said that the firearms are "looks like magic", I said they would prevent the burning at the stake.
And frankly, while they had primitive guns back then, I quite imagine they would see a M134 Minigun firing as rather magical.
I'm not quite sure if you understand how Stealth works then...
The idea of Stealth aircraft is to not reflect EM radiation at all. It bounces it away in another direction or absorbs it outright.
If detecting stealth was as simple as using a different frequency, then it would be worthless.
Well of course, but that misses the point. Aliens traveling across space to come here would of course bring their supplies with them. If we traveled back in time a few hundred years, we'd of course bring supplies with us.
The point is, if the US military today decided to invade... lets say the North Sentinel Islanders, how well do you think that would go for the Sentinelese people?
I'm always looking for a new idea that will be more productive than its cost. -- David Rockefeller
