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A comment on The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain Engagements [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by gruez on Thursday October 22, 2020 @09:08AM (#24857585)
There's other problems. Even if you contain your heat or vent it from a different side, you still need to produce hot exhaust to accelerate. If you don't, your position can be inferred from your last known position/acceleration.

This and other points are discussed here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Analysis/StealthInSpa...

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Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by lumost on Thursday October 22, 2020 @03:27PM (#24862336)
In the realm of hard sci-fi the detectability of an exhaust plume depends on a variety of factors including the ionization, temperature, shape, velocity, and angle of the plume wrt adversary, and the local medium.

There are a number of methods one could theoretically use to minimize these factors. As an example, imagine the detectability of a small angle coherent neutron beam or the IR exhaust of a black hole starship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship

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Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by DennisP on Thursday October 22, 2020 @10:15AM (#24858249)
In theory, you could fix the hot exhaust problem with a mass driver.
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