Re: Real Space Combat Help:

Allan Goodall writes:
@:) At 01:50 PM 4/10/97 -0400, you wrote:
@:) >Black is the best color for a near perfect absorber of energy.
@:) 
@:) Are you sure about that? Even black holes aren't perfect absorbers
@:) of energy. They absorb a lot but give off x-rays.

  Well you're right about the black, that's why blackbody objects
still radiate and all.	As far as the black holes are concerned I
think you're wrong but I'm not absolutely sure.  Black holes give off
so-called "Hawking radiation" which I think is lower energy than
X-rays.  Real-life black holes generally have a lot of crud spiraling
into them from nearby stars and the crud rubs up against itself and
gets very hot and THAT emits X-rays.  I think that, to within a
quantum theory, black holes are in fact perfect absorbers of energy.

@:) I think if you paint your ship black, you'll have to channel that
@:) heat out somewhere.

  This is the real problem.  I think even channeling heat out the
"back" of your ship (which requires knowing where your enemy is of
course) is pretty tough because it's going to diffuse into a big cloud
eventually.  I don't know how you could control it once it's out of
your ship.  In Brin's Sundiver, they had some kind of thermo-electric
gizmo that allowed them to convert heat into power and they used the
power to fire up a laser which they shot out of the back of the ship.
This would be a cool way of getting rid of waste heat but I don't
think it's feasible now or in the near future.

-joachim