Bradford's comments on IR

If I understood correctly:

You indicated that ships without thermal protection are visible at 1 LS
and
hard to detect at 10 LS. 

You worked with 300K temp I believe. 

You indicated ships could disperse their heat (or maybe even store it
internally by some method instead?) and thus (because radiation is a T^4
property), decrease their luminosity by 16 for every halving of
temperature.

So, this to me says that if I could drop my temp to 150 K (a long way
from
absolute zero) on the hull, I'd be visible only at 1/16th of a LS
(300,000
km/16 is roughly 20,000 km) . If I could drop my temp to 75K, I'd be
visible
at 1/256th of a LS (1500 km?). 

So, if I read you right, and I can drop my hull temp by even half (to
150K),
I can make detection difficult to inside of 60,000 km (which I'd call a
tactical range). If I can drop it to 75K, I can probably sneak right up
to
within 6000 km (6") in a tactical scale. 

Or am I missing something? I'd be interested to see some of the
math/assumptions/physical constants you used to back your calculations. 

Thomas Barclay
Software Specialist 
Defence Systems
xwave solutions
www.xwavesolutions.com
v: (613) 831 2018 x 3008

Alea iacta et pessimo resulto factura est.
 
Ave, Caesar! Te morituiri salutimas!