Comment Re:There Ain't No Stealth In Space (Score 1) 470
There were two sentences out of dozens in that post that I actually wrote.
They are a direct quote from you. If you disagree with them then you should not have posted them.
Who said I disagreed with them?
The distance from the Earth to Mars is about 200 million kilometers.
Your example ship would be closer than Mars is. A lot closer.
Not that readers need it pointed out, but Mars has mysteriously entered the discussion.
There is a reflector on the Moon. People aim lasers at that reflector. Those lasers diffuse over distance. "At the Moon's surface, the beam is about 6.5 kilometers (four miles) wide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment
That's from the Earth to the Moon. So even if you could focus the reaction mass a tightly as a laser it would spread out over a lot more than "a several kilometer wide umbrella" would cover even if you were only as far away as Mars.
Argh. You're comparing an exhaust, which rapidly cools off in space and generally acts very differently to a laser, to a laser. I don't even know where to start with that one.
Yes it can. It does that all the time. You are confusing spotting them with projecting their course over time.
Right, yeah: http://www.businessinsider.com...
It is physics. Unless you want to argue that the laws of physics do not apply
You keep using that word. It does not mean what you think it means.
Unless you're talking about being closer than Mars
jackiechanwtf.jpg
Saying that the answer is somewhere else is not addressing my point. Quote it. Like I quoted the Wikipedia article on how much the lasers diffuse between the Earth and the Moon.
I did. It's up there, in italics, marked 5, Informative, with a link to the full article, my first response to your post.
You are now talking about a distance less than the distance between the Earth and Mars. So something blocking out part of Mars would be very noticeable. Not to mention the Sun would be reflecting off of it. And that's not even addressing the interplanetary material that you had previously discounted.
Interplanetary != interstellar.
kilometers 350,000 is about Earth to the Moon
kilometers 200,000,000 is about Earth to Mars
kilometers 39,900,000,000,000 is about Earth to Alpha Centauri
I seriously have no idea where you're getting this stuff. At 1 million kilometers a ship with a 6km wide umbrella around its midriff would occupy about one eighth of the sky that Venus does when it's at its furthest from earth. That's the size of the dot you're saying is occluding everything behind it. That's the size of the dot with negligible differences from the background you're trying to differentiate.
There is no stealth in space.
Oh yes, there is.