posted
Not really. Cloaks are impervious to most types of sensors. What the Lord of Toadkiller Hall is saying is that one could conceivably adjust one's shield to warp visible light around a ship. But normal sensors could still tell if it was there - I mean, how many binocular-equipped look-outs do we see in ST, really?
Not that I agree with the idea - I think it's daft to be quite honest - but I'm just being annoying.
------------------ At that point, McDonald fired his gun three times in the air to emphasize his point. The crowd, estimated at 350,000, loudly cheered the new candidate.
"Let me make this clear: I am the law! I am your ruler! And you will have fries with that, motherf*cker!"
posted
No light warping required. Part of the current day stealth fighter's "stealthyness" is from radar absorbing materials on the plane's skin. The radar beams (or laser) hit the plane and are absorbed (transfering a small amount of heat) instead of being reflected back to the radar's receiver. Also angles of the hull reflect what isn't absorbed in other directions.
Now, ST shields seem to have the implied capability of absorbing nearly all energy in a given EM wavelength spread - if they didn't then a "simple" laser would be able to carve up the ship. If they can absorb laser energy then they should be able to absorb the visible light shining on them from the sun, at least enough to not be visible to the naked eye/telescope/radar receiver. The flaw in this is heat - the starship would need some way to radiate the heat absorbed, but ST ships don't ever seem to worry about physics so that shouldn't be a problem.
The Romulans wouldn't care, as the ship isn't "cloaked" it just isn't shiny. If you came along side you'd simply see a big black blob where the ship was...
Of course something else they could steal from the stealth fighter is the idea of painting their ships black. Because, see, the thing about space is....
Of course this is all somewhat off the thread's topic.
posted
About the Defiant penetrating Earth's surveillance nets: I don't think she ever did that. --- It was that episode where Sisko, Bashir, and Dax all travel back in time and Sisko gets mistaken for some Bell guy.
------------------ "God's in his heaven. All's right with the world."
posted
"Past Tense"? Interesting - I didn't remember anything like that. Why would the Defiant penetrate sensor nets, if her mission was just to ferry Sisko and friends to a conference? And after Sisko traveled to the past and got the real Bell killed, the sensor nets of Earth ceased to exist. Oh, well - have to rewatch. (It's well worth a rewatch in any case...)
In addition to "Tomorrow is Yesterday", at least TOS "Assignment: Earth" and VOY "Future's End" featured starships becoming invisible to Earth's radar systems by using their standard shields in some special mode. I agree that such partial cloaking is probably well outside the parameters of the Algeron treaty - as are the various holographic countermeasures we've seen in "Who Watches the Watchers" or "Basics" etc. Only "complete" cloaks count as illegal.
And Earth would partially cloak its orbital platforms anyway (paint them black or something) to protect the said spotted owl. Thousands of such platforms on the sky would ruin the starscape if they reflected sunlight...
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