Detection

A lot of people wrote wrote a lot of stuff on the subject:

Has it occured to anyone what the logical consequences of a universe
where most ships can sneak up on a planet are?	I discussed this with
Laserlight, and he accused me of recently reading a good bit of
Pournelle.  

Logically, if ships are difficult to detect then they can get close to
their targets easily.  This makes them impossible to defend against.  If
there is no way to defend against sneak raids, then there is no
rationale for multi-planetary political systems.  Why bother, when the
government can't defend you?  And why would anyone who can acquire an
armed ship do anything but raid planets?  It doesn't take long for this
to descend to mass piracy, with planet-bound serfs liable to whoever
pops into orbit today and demands whatever they want.  Is this what is
desired?  There are few good space battle scenarios, but if it scratches
your itch, you are welcome to it.

I prefer a universe where incoming raiders can be detected, and where
the FTL jump has a fairly large energy signature as well.  It just fits
better.  YMMV.

As for the squabbles about sensor technology in 2183. . . 

In 1817 the state of the art of sensor technology was an 18-year old kid
on a horse on a hill wearing tights and a ridiculous hat.  What makes
you think he could imagine a sonar suite?  Why should we be able to
predict the details of a sensor system equally far in our future?

John M. Atkinson